Two Stage Quiz

By Phoebe Jackson, John Abbott College

At a Glance

Discipline

  • STEM
  • Physics

Instructional Level

  • College & CEGEP

Course

  • Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism

Tasks in Workflow

Social Plane(s)

  • Individual
  • Group

Type of Tasks

  • Discussing
  • Taking a quiz & test

Technical Details

Useful Technologies

  • IF-At cards
  • Lon-capa (online)/Moodle

Class size

  • Small (20-49)

Time

  • Brief segment of class period (< 20 mins)

Instructional Purpose

  • Consolidation & metacognition

Overview

The aim of this activity is to give the students the opportunity to talk about the concepts seen in class and to discuss with their peers through peer learning. Students benefit by recieveing immediate feedback with the IF-AT cards, ensuring that they do not fall behind.

This 15-25 min activity uses the two-stage exam strategy and is integrated into the lesson plan. It is given at the beginning of each lecture as the final stage of learning the concepts seen in the previous lecture. In this activity students first answer three conceptual multiple-choice questions individually, then through discuss and arrive at a consensus in their teams and submit a second answer sheet. The teacher, while circulating is able to see if their are areas of the material that students had trouble with and require more review on.

Instructional Objectives

  • To activate prior knowledge, getting students ready to learn and extending their knowledge of the concepts seen in the prior lecture.
  • Through the peer-learning format, students are encouraged to articulate the concept clearly and are held accountable for the material both by contributing equally in their group and with the added incentive of the evaluation.

Workflow & Materials

Document

Workflow
Document

Quiz Answer Sheets

Phoebe Jackson

Contributor's Notes

Benefits
Challenges
Tips
Benefits
  • The daily aspect of these quizzes keeps students accountable for the material so they do not fall behind.
  • The immediate feedback is beneficial for students and the formative assessment is also useful for teachers.
  • In the online format allows the instructor to poll to see if the students need to go over any of the concepts again.
Challenges
  • It requires that the instructor is organizes as active learning activities require a higher level of energy on the part of students and so they are more invested. The multiple choice questions should not be open to interpretation.
  • The amount of class time this takes requires that it has to be embedded into the structure of the lesson plan.
Tips
  • Formulating good questions is important as the level needs to be right, forcing students to think about the more challenging parts of the material.
  • If done online: keep quiz questions separate from the answers as it will save time.

Applied Strategies

Two-Stage Exam

Individual assessment, group feedback

Comments

  1. Credit: 2-stage quizzes as a review strategy in physics were first introduced to me by my colleagues: Paul Bazelais who has conducted research in this area, and Michael Dugdale. – Phoebe

    Reply

Feedback

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