2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This work evaluates the effect of weekly in-class pop quizzes on the learning outcomes of ECE
sophomore-level undergraduate students in a signals & systems course at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The quizzes pursued two goals: to increase class attendance and to motivate students to keep up with the material in a timely manner. While the quizzes may help achieve both goals, in-class pop quizzes may also result in the elevation of students’ stress as well as they may negatively impact the students’ attitude toward the instructor.

We analyze the overall impact of the quizzes on the students’ final grades from multiple
perspectives. In addition, we examine the students’ opinion about the quizzes and the instructor. Finally, we evaluate if the quizzes encouraged students to attend lectures and stay on top of the material.

Our findings show that final grades are marginally negatively affected by the quizzes. However,
the main reason for that is not the quizzes themselves but the large number of students (∼27%)
who missed multiple quizzes. In fact, the quizzes resulted in improving the final grades for those students who attended most of them.

In addition, our results indicate that the students agree that quizzes helped them from multiple perspectives: encouraging attendance, promoting frequent review of course material, and preparing them for exams. Despite that, attendance decreased significantly toward the end of the semester.

Our findings also demonstrate that students experienced a high level of stress due to quizzes.
However, no evidence was found that the quizzes had a significant negative effect on the students’ attitude toward the instructors