Formative Assessment: Evaluating the Effectiveness of On-line Quizzes in a Core Business Finance Course

Abstract

This article examines the change from conventional pen-and-paper to computer-based formative assessment for a large second year Business Finance course. A brief history of the course’s formative assessment, its weaknesses and challenges for the effective administration of the course are presented. These weaknesses and challenges led to a change of practice to on-line mastery quizzes in order for students to gauge whether they have attained the level of base knowledge and comprehension required to successfully negotiate the course’s higher level learning outcomes.

Introducing the mastery quiz formative assessment system meant a large upfront investment in both time and money. However, very large savings in variable costs and in particular time have resulted since the change was implemented. Analysis of the 2008 distance cohort shows that completion and mastery of the on-line quizzes is a strong predictor of student performance in summative assessment. It is also shown that formative assessment is beneficial to borderline and academically weak students and that student usage of the formative assessment tool is better late, than never.

Keywords: Formative assessment, web enhanced, web delivery, online testing

JEL Classification: A22, G30