IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED: COMPARISON OF LIMITED VS. UNLIMITED ATTEMPTS AT ONLINE QUIZZES IN AN INTRODUCTORY GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS COURSE

It is common for instructors to assign readings to students which cover topics that will be discussed again during class meetings, but it is also common for students to either delay doing so until just prior to exams, or not at all. Short reading quizzes, both in-class and online, are frequently used as a means to motivate students to complete reading assignments in a timely manner. At the instructor's discretion, online quizzes allow students multiple chances to attempt a particular quiz, perhaps with time limits on each attempt, and with the possibility of the questions being drawn from a larger question pool each time. In this study, online reading quizzes were examined across two consecutive semesters in an introductory geographic information systems course, with the students in the first semester allowed unlimited attempts to complete each quiz before a deadline, and a limit of five attempts per quiz for students taking the same course the following semester. Questions were drawn from a pool for each attempt, and students were shown their overall score after an attempt, but were given no indication which questions were answered correctly. Analysis of the frequency with which students attempted the quizzes, and comparisons between the scores achieved between the two semesters, suggest differences in reading frequencies in subsets of students. Keywords: Online quiz, reading quiz, science education
INTRODUCTION Many instructors assign reading to be completed outside of class, often as a means of preparing students for material which will be covered during subsequent class meetings. Likewise, most [...]