Snapshot
Type of Interaction: Small Groups, Teamwork
Type of Course: Online, Hybrid
Tools Used: Excel
Credit
Dr. Patricia Shields: Political Science
Instructors are often tempted to add quizzes into their courses as an easy way to test students’ knowledge of basic concepts or incentivize reading the week’s texts. However, these quizzes often feel superficial to both instructors and students, and there is some concern that they do not test students in a meaningful way, particularly at the graduate level. Dr. Pat Shields found a way to address this in her fully online Applied Research Methods course for public administration graduate students.
Quiz Matrix
Throughout the course, students are required to read many abstracts, empirical studies and proposals in preparation for writing their own applied research proposal. To ensure that they complete their readings and instructional videos, Dr. Shields included 7 quizzes in her course. However, she was worried that students would not engage with the content at the level required of them. With the help of her graduate assistant, she hit on a way to address this problem. In the face-to-face version of this course that she had taught for many years, students were required to fill out detailed matrices about the readings they completed for discussion in class. With a little planning, Dr. Shields was able to adjust these matrices for use in her online quizzes.
For example, in the first quiz of the course (which takes place in the second lesson), students were required to read 7 abstracts, and fill out a set of similar questions for each in a matrix:
The questions for each quiz matrix draw specifically on the concepts covered in that week’s lesson. Only after they have filled out the matrix are they ready to take the associated quiz, as 40-60% of the questions are drawn from the matrix.
To guide students, Dr. Shields included a small number of correct answers in each matrix as examples of what she expected. Students were also encouraged to work together in self-organized groups to complete their matrices.
The first quiz matrix was designed to be a simple lead in, which is why students were only required to read and tabulate information from abstracts, rather than full papers. They were given one week to complete this assignment. Later matrices were more complex as students were required to read multiple full papers before filling out detailed matrices. For these activities, they were given two weeks.
Dr. Shields deliberately built these matrix activities into her course right from the beginning. She planned her weeks according to how much time students would need to complete the matrices and built her quizzes with the matrices in mind.
Did it Work?
The matrix approach proved a very successful method for engaging students with quizzes at a deeper level:
- Working in groups enhanced class cohesion.
- Students appreciated and acknowledged the fact that the matrices made them delve much deeper into the concepts covered in the course, making the quizzes less like a “game” or obstacle, and more like a valuable learning tool.
- Students learned to associate success on the quiz with completing the matrix.
- The clues provided by the instructor as to what kind of answers she was looking for were extremely helpful in guiding the activity and keeping students on the right track.
- Students appreciated the agency inherent in being able to self-organize into collaborative groups (or to work alone, if they preferred).
- Students became more comfortable with Excel as a result of the matrix activities.
In a graduate level course, memorization seems out of place. By including matrices in her course, Dr. Shields created quizzes more appropriate to students at this level.
“Bumps” … and Solutions
The only complaint that came up was that Dr. Shields did not provide the corrected matrices to students after the quiz due dates. This is mainly because she was concerned that the matrices would get out to future students, thereby decreasing the value of the activity. But she has some thoughts on how to address this, in her course or any others:
- The instructor could develop multiple matrix assignments for each quiz and rotate between them each time the course is taught.
- If the course is hybrid or face-to-face, the instructor could discuss the matrix in a face-to-face session.
- If the course is fully online, an optional synchronous meeting could be arranged for discussing the matrix, after the quiz due date.
Further Application
The matrix assignment can be used for more than just reading quizzes. Any content that students can arrange in tabular format (e.g. statistics, diagnoses and their treatments, theoretical frameworks, case study comparisons, etc.) could benefit from a matrix activity such as this one, whether or not it is tied to a quiz. It is a method that requires a significant amount of work on the part of the instructor, at least initially, but the improvements to student learning makes it well worth the while.