Online formative assessments "have the potential to be useful learning aids to help students perform better on course assessments" (Kibble, 2007). Formative assessments such as this provide a means of providing immediate formative feedback, helping students identify gaps in knowledge. A study by Zhang and Henderson (2015) found that the use of formative evaluation quizzes produced higher summative examination results than traditional instruction only.
However, it has been shown (Kibble, 2007) that students often fail to see the value of these assessments, particularly if they are used for purely formative purposes. In many cases, teachers respond by allocating module marks to encourage greater participation.
Gamification, the use of game elements, such as points, badges and achievements, is being increasingly adapted to educational contexts to improve motivation and participation (Cheong et al., 2013). In this paper we present a new tool, Quiz Store, which has been developed by the author to make use of gamification to encourage students to participate in a series of formative quizzes. Quiz Store incorporates gamification approaches including badges, leader board and a self-progress monitor in an effort to motivate students to engage with the quizzes to improve their learning.
This paper will report on the preliminary findings from an evaluation of the tool with final year computing students.
- Cheong, Christopher; Cheong, France; and Filippou, Justin, "Quick Quiz: A Gamified Approach for Enhancing Learning" (2013). PACIS 2013 Proceedings. 206.
[2] Zhang, N. and Henderson, C.N.R. (2015) ‘Can formative quizzes predict or improve summative exam performance?*’, Journal of Chiropractic Education, 29(1), pp. 16–21. doi: 10.7899/jce-14-12.
[3] Kibble J. ‘Use of unsupervised online quizzes as formative assessment in a medical physiology course: effects of incentives on student participation and performance’. Adv Physiol Educ. 2007;31(3):253–260
