According to a new research study, online quizzes are not helping students learn their subject. It was shown through a study done by Harm-Jan Steenhuis and Brian Grinder of Eastern Washington University, Spokane and Erik Joost de Bruijn of University of Twente, The Netherlands, that for students of operations management course, online quizzes are not as useful as some educators might think.
Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in the educational environment fall into two distinct categories. In the first, ICT is used for instructional purposes. In the second, for testing. As a part of the latter, online quizzes are increasingly popular as tools for testing student knowledge and skills and also as formative tools to help teachers mould the curriculum to fit the learning progress of the students. Howver, the above mentioned team discovered that students perceive such quizzes as helpful, but they may not be as useful to learning as both students and educators believe. The team investigated the behaviour and performance of students using online quizzes. They found that overall student grades were not improved by the formative online quizzes. The details of findings were published in the International Journal of Information and Operations Management Education.
