Using Clickers: Does Asking Open-Ended Questions Increase Student Performance?
Abstract
Constructivist theory indicates that students should perform better when required to create their own answer to a question. They should also exhibit increased comprehension and therefore perform better on follow-up questions on the same topic. To test this idea, students in a large introductory biology course were given different sets of questions. First, students were presented with an open-ended question where no potential answers were visible. After peer discussion, the same question was posed as a multiple choice question. Students were then immediately asked an isomorphic multiple choice question. For comparison, the same questions were asked in a different section of the same course but all questions were the standard multiple choice format. Preliminary data indicate that students perform better on when required to create their own answer. Also, it appears that this format increases student understanding such that they are more likely to answer the isomorphic questions correctly.
Location
Concourse
Recommended Citation
Fisher, Ginger, "Using Clickers: Does Asking Open-Ended Questions Increase Student Performance?" (2013). SoTL Commons Conference. 39.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/sotlcommons/SoTL/2013/39
Using Clickers: Does Asking Open-Ended Questions Increase Student Performance?
Concourse
Constructivist theory indicates that students should perform better when required to create their own answer to a question. They should also exhibit increased comprehension and therefore perform better on follow-up questions on the same topic. To test this idea, students in a large introductory biology course were given different sets of questions. First, students were presented with an open-ended question where no potential answers were visible. After peer discussion, the same question was posed as a multiple choice question. Students were then immediately asked an isomorphic multiple choice question. For comparison, the same questions were asked in a different section of the same course but all questions were the standard multiple choice format. Preliminary data indicate that students perform better on when required to create their own answer. Also, it appears that this format increases student understanding such that they are more likely to answer the isomorphic questions correctly.
