The relationship between in‐class written exercise and exam performance in an allied health gross anatomy course

Abstract

Interactive teaching methods, such as in‐class written exercises, can be added to traditional lectures to assess and enhance student learning. The goal of this study was to determine if student performance on in‐class written exercises could be used to predict exam performance. A set of identical written exercises, consisting of 5–6 questions, was administered to 45 allied health graduate students immediately before (PRE) and after (POST) three review lectures in a gross anatomy course. Students were given the correct answers to the questions after completing the POST exercise. For all three blocks, student performance increased significantly between PRE and POST exercises, suggesting short term knowledge acquisition. PRE scores were positively correlated with block exam scores (1:r2=0.29, 2:r2=0.16, 3:r2=0.11; p<0.05), while POST scores only showed a significant positive correlation with the first and second block exam scores (1:r2=0.14, 2:r2=0.23; p<0.05). Student feedback indicated that exercises enhanced the learning experience and subject matter understanding. Our findings suggest that a moderate positive correlation exists between PRE/POST exercise and exam performance, although not uniform in nature. While in‐class exercise performance may not be a strong predictor for exam performance, exercises can be used to enhance student learning and self‐assessment in traditional lecture formats.Grant Funding Source: n/a