Reflective Quizzes: A Skill-Building Alternative to Multiple Choice
Quizzes are helpful, especially in large classes, because they’re easy to grade and can motivate some students to do their pre-assigned reading.
The problem with quizzes is they assess “reading and regurgitating” skills more than entrepreneurial skills.
Quizzes also create a cat-and-mouse game where students can share answers online, forcing you to constantly update the quiz questions.
On the other hand, reflection assignments are great at assessing skills and mindset development – they just traditionally take longer to grade.
Reflective Quizzes: Build Skills (with less grading)
We’ve been developing a new type of quiz for our ExEC Big Intro curriculum that:
- Is as fast to grade as a normal quiz
- Incentivizes students to come to class prepared
- Uses open-ended questions and reflective prompts to assess student skills and mindset development
Here’s a demo:
Grading Shouldn’t Be Exhausting
Assessments in experiential courses can be as formative for students as the exercises themselves!
So if assessment is one of your least favorite parts of teaching, there are a couple things that may help:
Want Your Students Building Real Skills?
Request a preview of ExEC Big Intro here.
What’s Next?
In an upcoming post, we will share information about our upcoming Summer Summit where we will share some exciting new exercises!
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4 thoughts on “Reflective Quizzes: A Skill-Building Alternative to Multiple Choice”
Sounds like a lot of work backend in order for the students to fill in a free text form and not a quiz. I’m not sure how this helps me grade the students in a quick way. I still have a free text form that I need to grade. The system will never by itself help me distinguish a really good answer from someone who just tries to trick the system and pass.
I can see where you’re coming from, especially because the difference may be subtle to sense when you’re not actually using the system.
While you’ll still want to read each response, the quality of the responses is much higher than that of a normal free text form answers because students have gotten feedback on how to improve their answers as they were writing them.
So you’re right, you’ll still need to read each answer, but the time it takes to grade them and provide feedback is dramatically reduced. It’ll still take longer than grazing a multiple choice quiz, but our intention is that the trade-off is worth it in terms of the value of the reflective experience for students.
how do i try the reflective questions? Or how can i use them?
Hey Mitch, I shot you an email with details. Let me know if if you’re interested.