In order to motivate students to improve their pre-class preparation, Dr. Lili Cui (UMBC) and Dr. Colleen Countryman created and assessed a series of brief, online, weekly reading quizzes.
Recent educational reforms (like flipped classrooms) call for the usage of Reading Quizzes, but very little research has been done on its educational impact. In our study, we compared the test and Clicker results of students in two sections of the same course, taught by the same instructor. In addition to completing the normal course assignments, the experimental section of the course also completed reading quizzes. We observed statistically significant improvements in the experimental section’s exam and Clicker scores, as compared to the control section. Additionally, we observed that the retention rates in the experimental section were statistically significantly higher, potentially indicating that reading quizzes have a positive impact on low performers.