Meeting Abstract
Leaving an answer blank can be a simple question to grade, but it represents a failure in the ability to effectively assess student understanding on course assessments. We evaluated whether student completion rate would improve when students were provided with bullet points or numbers rather than simply given a large blank answer space for multi-part questions. Our findings indicate that students were more likely to complete a question when bullet points or numbers were present in the provided answer space. We collected data from 111 samples from classes including Marine Biology, Sensation and Perception, and Animal Behavior. In each of these classes, we randomly gave half of the students the quiz or test version with the control (blank) and half received a version where one question had bullet points or numbers (experimental). We recorded the grade on the question, the quiz, and the portion of the experimental question that was completed. While mean student completion rates improved from 88.8% to 99.2% (P < 0.01, 2-tailed unpaired t-test) when bullet point or number prompts were given, there was no significant increase in score on the experimental question, mean of 72.2% without dots and 79.9% with dots. We found this quick fix to significantly increase student response rate on assessments, which not only can increase the chance of student success, but provides instructors with more completed assessments allowing them to better assess student achievement of course outcomes.
