The Goals:

1) determine students' sentiments about weekly online exams 

and 

2) assess learning and understanding of course material 

The Methods:

We used a pre-survey before administering any assessments. Afterwards, we tasked students with justifying their answer to a more difficult multiple choice (MC) question during one of their weekly online exams. We then administered a short answer question (SAQ) homework assignment, in which the questions integrated multiple topics into one -- to compare, usual assignments are specific to the lecture week's content. After the assessments were completed, students then completed a post survey to reflect on the assessment and gather additional habits on studying and test taking.  

The Data:

Statistics reported were obtained through the native Qualtrics engine that surveys were administered through, or calculated via Microsft Excel. Figures were generated through Prism GraphPad Vers.9 software.

61 students ranked their agreeability to 6 statements with the stem 'I find weekly online exams to be...' :

1) less stressful than in-person exams

2) less stressful than one larger exam

3) helpful in retaining information from class

4) easy to make time for 

5) good test of what I know

6) a good test for bringing many concepts together

Similar to the online exam sentiments results, the majority of responses agreed in some manner with the statements posed. However, statement 5, which asked if online exams were a good test of what they know, showed the most uncertainty of all the statements. 20% of students did not vote in a positive manner. Furthermore, statement 3, which asked if online exams were helpful in retaining information, had the most disagreement of all statements. 8% of students disagreed with this statement. 

These two notable differences among other statements may highlight that students may not be retaining or understanding course content as well as previous exam methods may illicit. On a scale of 0-10, with zero being not confident at all and 10 being very confident, students ranked themselves at a 5.8 ± 2.4 on their confidence on doing equally as well or better when retaking a previous exam. Similarly, students ranked themselves at a 4.8 ± 2.5 confidence in doing well on an SAQ which integrated several course concepts. At fairly modest to low scores, student's self perception in the confidence of their success is not very high.

All 177 students participated in a justification assessment during one of their usual weekly online exams. Students were given a multiple choice question to answer, and were then tasked to justify their answer. Answers were scored on a scale of 0-5 with the following scoring description:

0) Answer left blank

1) Answer is irrelevant with no knowledge based on content 

2) No link, with some relevant ideas, but none about the answer

3) Partial link, surface ideas are present but not connected 

4) Full link, two ideas are connected and elaborated 

5) Complex link, three or more ideas are connected in several in depth ways.

This justification method and scoring technique were adapted from 'Assessing Integrated Understanding of Science' by DeBoer et al., 2008. 

Overall, 8.5% students (n=15) chose the incorrect answer to the question, whereas 91.5% of students (n=162) responded correctly. 138 total students both responded correctly and provided their justification. The average score excluding blanks was 3.7 ± 1.4.  51.5% of these students (n=71) demonstrated complex or full links within their justifications, while 26.8% of students (n=37) demonstrated a partial link, and 21.7% of students (n=30) did not demonstrate an appropriate link. Given these responses, half of the class seemingly has an understanding of the in-depth concepts and intricacies behind the question and answer choices, whereas a quarter of students have some understanding about the meaning behind their answers. Concernedly, up to one fifth of students who answered correctly were unable to bring together the proper understanding for why they chose their answer. However, one must keep in mind that students do have their notes available to them, in which some justifications lend themselves to the possibility of being written with the aid of notes given their intricacies. One such response is shared below: 

"The Old Friends hypothesis suggests that there are certain microorganisms that are important to instruct our immune systems to do what it's supposed to do better. Wienstock built off of this theory and investigated what would happen if people with IBD (an inappropriate IgE response) were infected with a parasite to better re-direct IgE. He found that most of the people with IBD had improved symptoms after being infected with a parasite, showing that it may be possible for our immune systems to be re-educated to improve our immune responses. In question 10, people with MS are exhibiting an inappropriate Th1 response. According to the Old Friends hypothesis and Wienstock's findings, it can be suggested that their MS symptoms improved after parasitic infection because their immune systems were being "re-educated." Therefore, the most plausible answer choice is that after infection, there would be increased numbers of Treg cells, since Treg cells help turn off other T helper cell responses, which would decrease the inappropriate Th1 response seen in MS, thus also decreasing MS symptoms."

Although there are 177 students in the class, only 35 students participated in our close-out survey. Of the responses, 28 shared their sentiments on whether they enjoyed, felt neutral, or disliked the exercise. Overall, 71.4% of students enjoyed the exercise, while 10.7% disliked the exercise. Most interestingly, the majority of additional commentary came from the students who enjoyed the exercise expressing they enjoyed the extra credit (EC); how it made them think over the thought process of their answer; and other responses like boosted confidence, the reinforcements of idea, and simple fun. 

30 to 35 students ranked their use of various course resources prior to and during exams. 

This project still needs to be further analyzed to better assess how students are understanding the content and material of the course. As one may notice, findings from Assessment 2 are currently not included. Due to the nature and number of submissions, it will take a considerable amount of time to analyze this final piece. 

Given the findings of this project, I personally believe that current format of online exams are providing a disservice to students in part of their ability to connect various content together into coherent understanding. However, because students are enjoying the format of these exams, it is difficult to determine if they should be completely removed. A happy medium of the two may involve additional written exercises in order to reinforce material and concepts, such that they are better understood in the long run.