1. Research Problem Part of learning is learning from mistakes, but there is no “safe” mechanism for attempt->failure->reattempt built into most courses where grades depend heavily on a small number of exams. Students have no incentive to revisit “failed” material from midterm exams until studying for the final exam. Students get discouraged when faced with failures on midterm exams.

2. Research Question Will offering students multiple tries on low-stakes assessments improve student perception of learning gains and mastery of learning outcomes?

3. Research Methods My primary research methods include: Give online, low-stakes quizzes after each content module. Offer optional “re-quiz” opportunities to give students additional chances to master failed outcomes and improve grades. Re- quizzes will not include all outcomes. How will I collect these data? Mastery of learning outcomes will be measured based on performance on final exam. Final exam questions will be coded based on learning outcomes. Survey instrument to collect student attitudes and approaches to repeat quizzes My strategy to analyze these data will be: Use ANOVA followed by post-hoc comparison to compare final exam scores from concepts not quizzed, concepts quizzed once, and concepts covered on re-quizzes. Compare average number of quiz attempts for final letter grade and/or final exam grade Code student responses to repeat quiz survey instrument.

4. Alignment of Research Question and Methods Question Will offering students multiple tries on low-stakes assessments improve student perception of learning gains and mastery of learning objectives? Method Offer re-quizzes on select learning objectives Quantitate final exam performance on each learning objective Compare number of attempts with final grade Quantitate final exam performance on each learning objective Compare number of attempts with final grade Student surveys to explain quiz practices

5. Progress since the Institute My course is scheduled to run in Spring 2016 Prepared the following documents: IRB documentation Student survey instrument Evaluated learning objectives and learning outcomes Learning objectives are in revision to make them assessable (change to action verbs rather than verbs like “understand” or “learn” Learning outcomes have been sorted and subdivided for quizzes (although I’m not sure I will share the subdivided list with students, as it is rather intimidating all at once) Gathered and sorted quiz questions This is an ongoing process as I will revise quizzes up until they are posted based on class progress Still need to: Receive IRB approval Figure out how to force Blackboard to do my bidding in terms of score-keeping Finalize outcomes list Figure out how to write an abstract for ASMCUE when I won’t have final data yet