Carnegie Mellon University
January 08, 2018

Can Pre-Class Assessments Help Students Prepare for Lecture?

Foundations of Software Engineering

Erdogmus and Peraire teach a flipped course on Foundations of Software Engineering, in which students watch lecture videos outside of class time and engage in active learning activities during the in-person time. Erdogmus and Peraire wanted to assess the efficacy of embedding pre and post assessments in their online videos to improve student learning from the video content, and to better prepare students to learn from the in-person component of the course. Each of the two sections of the class received embedded pre and posttest assessments for a different half of the videos. Learning was measured in terms of performance on an in-class quiz, as well as performance on final exam questions corresponding to the material. Furthermore, students who received embedded assessments performed significantly better on the in-class quiz questions compared to students who did not receive embedded assessments for that topic. Results suggest that including embedded assessments in videos can help students in flipped classes better prepare for face to face sessions.
chart indicating proportion correct on in-class quiz

Students who received embedded assessments performed better on the in-class quiz questions (M = 64.94, SD = 9.54), compared to students who did not receive embedded assessments who scored (M = 61.31, SD = 9.95). Error bars are the 95% confidence intervals for the means. 

The mean difference of 3.63 was statistically significant, 95% CI [5.97, 1.30], t(48) = 3.12, p < 0.01, d = .37.
Story originally posted here.