Online Quizzing With Confidence

The Online Quizzing with Confidence application lets instructors construct “confidence-weighted” multiple-choice quizzes and assign them to students within a learning management system. This quiz type asks students to indicate their certainty in one of three choices, and includes an “I Don’t Know” option if they are completely unsure. This alternative approach to multiple-choice testing is shown to reduce student anxiety, minimize guessing and more accurately assess knowledge.

This project was inspired by Elizabeth and Robert Bjork’s presentation, Why Don’t the Trials and Errors of Everyday Living and Learning Teach Us How to Learn?, at the 2018 Science of Learning Research Symposium at Columbia University. CTL Learning Designer Michael Tarnow began exploring the use of quizzing beyond summative assessment, including assessing critical-thinking skills and choosing incorrect options to improve long-term retention. His research led to a Provost-funded Innovate Course Module Design grant to build an online application in collaboration with the CTL’s software design and development team.

The completed application allows instructors to build custom quizzes based on best practices for weighted multiple choice questions. The application fully integrates with the CourseWorks LMS to provide a seamless experience for students taking the quiz and reviewing their answers. Instructors can review student responses with SpeedGrader, a Canvas grading tool, and can view comprehensive analytics on class performance. A timer option was added in October 2022, a feature allowing instructors to administer time-limited quizzes.

Columbia faculty members Sarah Hansen, Department of Chemistry, and Alfreda Spagna, Department of Psychology, collaborated with the CTL to pilot Quizzing with Confidence in their Fall 2021 classes. The faculty members found that Quizzing with Confidence provided increased insight into student reasoning and encouraged students to reflect on their understanding rather than guess an answer.

As Quizzing with Confidence moves beyond the pilot, the team hopes to increase the usage of multiple-choice quizzes as a learning tool rather than an assessment tool. Research efforts will determine if Quizzing with Confidence improves the construction of multiple-choice questions, improves long-term retention of information and decreases the incentive to guess an answer.

Cover Photo by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu on Unsplash