Lecturers should implement online practice tests with automatically generated individual corrective item feedback and encourage steady participation¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 5 claims (4 for, 1 mixed) · 1 study (1 associational), q2 · 1 of 1 report an effect size · 5 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article's closing recommendation for educators is that "practice tests plus automatically generated individual corrective item feedback can be implemented easily via online tests" and that the results "should encourage lecturers to provide students with practice tests". Because participation rates showed many students test only late in the term, the authors add that "educators might need to encourage students to steadily practice-test their knowledge". Feedback should give the correctness of the answer and the correct solution, beyond pure true/false feedback.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Individual corrective feedback stating answer correctness and the correct solution
• Online delivery so feedback is generated automatically immediately after test completion

Constraints¶

• No data were collected on how, with which strategies or frequency, students further processed the feedback

Target Learners¶

• undergraduate students in higher education lecture courses

Target Learning Goals¶

• final-exam performance
• metacognitive judgment accuracy (absolute accuracy and sensitivity)

Claims¶

• Students who received corrective feedback post-processed practice tests more intensely and rated the tests as more useful for monitoring than students without feedback [+W]
• In authentic undergraduate courses, taking more voluntary practice tests predicts higher final-exam performance, with and without corrective feedback [+W]
• Without feedback, more practice-test participation predicts lower specificity (worse detection of incorrect answers); with corrective feedback this negative relation disappears [~W]
• More frequent practice-test participation predicts higher absolute accuracy of item-specific judgments in the final exam, regardless of feedback [+W]
• More frequent practice-test participation predicts higher sensitivity (better detection of correct answers) in final-exam judgments, with and without feedback [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Frequent, Low-Stakes Quizzes
• Cumulative Review Quizzes
• Use frequent, low-stakes, cumulative tests in varied formats, including pretests, and encourage student self-testing

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Nick Naujoks, Bettina Harder, Marion Händel. (2022). Testing pays off twice: Potentials of practice tests and feedback regarding exam performance and judgment accuracy. Metacognition and Learning. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-022-09295-x