The effect on student behaviour and achievement of removing incentives to complete online formative assessments

This research explored the effect of incentives to complete online quizzes during a course. When a 1% weighting incentive per quiz was removed, student engagement dropped dramatically. There is also evidence that students who continued to complete quizzes did so with less vigour, spending less time on each quiz, starting them later in the week and having fewer attempts per quiz on average. The average mark per quiz was also lower once an incentive to complete them was removed. There was no significant difference in examination performance based on how many quizzes a student continued to attempt after incentives were removed. However, a comparison to a control group of students who sat the same invigilated assessments showed that, relative to term test performance, final exam mean score was 7% lower for the cohort who had the incentive to complete online quizzes removed. This differed from the control group, who showed no difference between term test and final examination mean scores when quiz incentives were maintained for the entire course. Building on previous research, this study demonstrates that a binary variable representing engagement in online quizzes did not capture the quality of that online engagement. Implications for practice or policy: Completion of online formative assessments by students is reduced if course leaders remove small-stakes incentives. The removal of small-stakes incentives by course leaders harms student motivation and achievement. Specifically, students who complete formative online assessment without incentives have fewer attempts, start them later in the availability window, spend less time completing them and record a lower mean score than those with incentives. Average final examination achievement is lower when incentives to complete online formative assessments are removed by course leaders.

Five Tips for Teaching and Learning During the COVID-19 Movement Control Order Era: A Family Medicine Perspective

The Malaysian government’s ongoing movement control order (MCO) to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread, has disrupted the teaching and learning (T&L) activities of higher education institutions in the country. This paper seeks to outline the steps taken by the Department of Family Medicine of the International Medical University (IMU), Malaysia, to adapt its online teaching and learning activities. The five tips are: i) understand how to use online T&L platforms; ii) teachers should create multiple communication channels; iii) ensure attendance is captured; iv) enhance the online T&L experience and v) conduct online formative assessments.

Trends of undergoing formative assessment in undergraduate medical students

Objective: Medical curriculum is always subject to new strategies to ensure effective delivery of learning material. Online formative assessments are gaining popularity over conventional paper based formative assessments due to recent advances in technology and increasing familiarity of students with computer-based examinations. With this background, objectives of this study were to explore trends of computer based formative assessment in undergraduate medical students and to investigate the impact of online formative assessments on summative assessment scores. Methodology: A prospective cohort study was conducted on 100 medical students from 3rd year in November 2016 and July 2017. The data was collected using SPSS software and analyzed by T-tests and descriptive tables. Results: The mean summative score of students who took an online formative assessment in a module was significantly higher compared to mean score of students who did not take formative assessment. Mean summative score of another group of students who took an online formative assessment in a different module was statistically different than mean score of students who did not take formative assessment (p- Value = 0.00). Conclusion: Online formative assessment is an effective tool for improving student’s performance in the summative assessment.