Are You Ready for Your Studies - Are we Assessing Students Readiness? An evaluation of the usefulness of the Level 2 ARFY quizzes

• Project leader(s): Soraya Kouadri MostéfaouiOli Howson
• Theme: Supporting students
• Faculty: STEM
• Status: Archived
• Dates: November 2019 to September 2022

The Are You Ready for Your Studies Quizzes have recently been implemented to help students decide whether they are ready to study a module.

There are usually three parts to such quizzes, which have a varying number of questions. In Part 1 students are asked a few general questions about their previous experiences. In Part 2 students are asked more specific questions related to a set of learning outcomes. In Part 3 they are asked about how they found the test. After they are done students are given a score and a general impression of whether they are ready for the module.

The aim of this project is to evaluate the usefulness of such quizzes for the core Q67 level 2 modules. Are the quizzes really assessing the students’ readiness to start studying their level 2 modules? What impact have these quizzes had on the modules? The study will focus particularly on modules with low retention and/or students’ satisfaction such as M250, TT284 and M269. The project will investigate the success of such diagnostic quizzes, measures of success to be used are :

1. retention and progression of students to Level 3 or other Level 2 modules on the pathways;
2. students perceptions of their preparedness for their Level 2;

More specific aims are to: 

1. Investigate the success of using the diagnostic quizzes and their role in preparing students for their Level 2 modules.
2. Establish if any correlation exists between levels of student engagement and attainment  with the modules at Level 2 and success in the diagnostic quizzes.
3. Investigate if there is any gender discrepancy in the quiz results, are male or female students more likely to appear more or less prepared based on the quiz results.
4. Does the level of apparent preparedness follow through to the final results and/or retention?