Two-stage examinations: Can examinations be more formative experiences?

Abstract

Two-stage examinations consist of a first stage in which students work individually as they typically do in examinations (stage 1), followed by a second stage in which they work in groups to complete another examination (stage 2), which typically consists of a subset of the questions from the first examination. Data from two-stage midterm and final examinations are used to assess the extent to which individuals improve their performance when collaborating with other students. On average, the group (stage 2) score was about one standard deviation above the individual (stage 1) score. While this difference cannot be interpreted as the causal effect of two-stage examinations on learning, it suggests that individuals experienced substantial performance gains when working in groups in an examination. This average performance gain was comparable with the average difference between the top performer of the group in stage 1 and the group's stage 1 average, and was equivalent to about two-thirds of the difference between the "super student" score (i.e. the sum of the maximum score for each question in stage 1) and the group's stage 1 average. This last result suggests that group collaboration takes substantial (albeit partial) advantage of the aggregate knowledge and skills of the group's individual members. Student feedback about their experience with two-stage examinations reveal that that these types of examinations are generally perceived to be more helpful for learning and are less stressful than traditional examinations. Finally, using data on group gender compositions, we investigate the potential role of gender dynamics on group efficiency.

Two-Stage Collaborative Exams have Little Impact on Subsequent Exam Performance in Undergraduate Mathematics

“…They found that, among groups where no students had the correct answer, 25% produced a correct answer at stage two, while groups with two or more students who had the correct answer were successful 96% of the time. Levy et al (2018) took this further, defining a measure of 'collaborative efficiency' which shows how much the group gained at stage two as a proportion of the maximum possible gain based on combining the best of their stage one responses. The study found that groups attained an average of 67% of the maximum possible gain, suggesting that the group collaboration was "substantially (albeit partially) effective in improving students' examination performances and taking advantage of the aggregate knowledge and skills of the group's individual members" (Levy et al 2018, p8).…”

Making Internal Feedback Explicit: Harnessing the comparisons students make during two-stage exams

“…Also, research shows that the group output is almost always better than any student's individual outputs (e.g. Levy, Svoronos and Klinger, 2018).…”

“…1999;Reiger and Heiner, 2014). Importantly, during the dialogue that occurs at the group stage, students give and receive verbal feedback, which helps elaborate their understanding of the work they produced at the individual stage beforehand (Gilley and Clarkston, 2014;Levy, Svoronos and Klinger, 2018). The immediacy of this feedback is unusual in normal teaching practice, but it is even more uncommon in an exam situation (Rieger and Heiner, 2014).…”

“…The latter is reflected in students' individual performance in subsequent tasks (Cortright et al, 2003;Gilley and Clarkston, 2014) Investigative focus The research in this article examines two-stage exams from an internal feedback perspective. In published research, feedback dialogue is posited as the main factor contributing to learning benefits from having students participate in two stage exams (Gilley and Clarkston, 2014;Reiger and Heiner, 2014;Levy, Svoronos and Klinger, 2018). The evidence comes from students' self-reports and indirectly from outcomes studies.…”

“…Researchers maintain that the feedback dialogue that occurs during the group stage in two stage-exams has positive learning benefits (Gilly and Clarkston, 2014;Ives et al, 2016;Levy, Svoronos and Klinger, 2018). In this study, we had students write an account of their internal feedback thereby making it explicit.…”