Providing regular assessments and earlier feedback on Moodle in an introductory computer science course : a user study

Abstract

Formal feedback on assessments is given to students half way through the semester for a lot of tertiary level courses. For some students, it can be too late to change their study habits and they might not have realised that they were struggling before getting the feedback. Receiving late feedback can also result in lowering learner’s motivation as well. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of providing regular feedback on students’ academic achievement. The sample group included 92 students from semester 2 2016 and 57 students from semester 1 2017. They were the first-year Bachelor Computer Science students at UNITEC Institute of Technology, New Zealand, doing an introductory database course.

The course had three assessments in 2016 including two computers based tests and a final exam on paper. Weekly quizzes were introduced in 2017 with the aim of providing early regular feedback to students. Preliminary results show that providing this feedback early on did not significantly improve the results of their first formal assessment.

More studies are needed to examine the effectiveness of weekly quizzes on students’ performance throughout the semester. Subjective evaluation showed that majority of students liked getting regular feedback in form of quizzes and found it valuable for their learning.