49 - Low-stakes Quizzing (LSQ) in Gross Anatomy: Exploring Student Perceptions of Student Created Lab Quizzes in a First-year Medical Student Gross Anatomy Course

Poster Board Number: 49
There are separate poster presentation times for odd and even posters.
Odd poster #s – first hour
Even poster #s – second hour

Abstract Body : Introduction and Objective: The anatomy laboratory offers many opportunities to learn via dissection, technology, and implementation of various curricular techniques—one of those techniques being low stakes quizzing. Benefits of low-stakes quizzing include providing quick and meaningful feedback, encourages mastery, and also promoting retention and recall in students. Low stakes quizzing was implemented in a first-year clinical gross anatomy course with students responsible for generating the questions. The goal was to implement an active learning strategy that facilitates the student learning process and enhances the culture of student ownership of that learning process.
Materials and Methods: First year medical students, at the University of Florida, are engaged in peer teaching during their gross anatomy lab. Students are grouped and assigned a week to teach a specific region of the human body. After completing a peer teaching preparation session, student peer teachers were given the following week to create questions from the material they were responsible for teaching. Each peer teaching group consisted of seven peer teachers; therefore, seven questions were submitted. One peer teacher from each peer group was tasked with submitting the group’s questions to the course instructor. Five of those questions were chosen for the lab quiz and the rest placed in a course repository for student practice. Also, the final three laboratories required the peer teachers to create “practical style” questions.
Results: Students were surveyed regarding low stakes quizzing and their experience creating quiz questions (78 % response rate (107/138). The survey consisted of six quantitative questions and two open-ended questions. The highest percentage of agreement (strongly agree and agreed) were associated with the statements, “The laboratory quiz encouraged recall concerning the associated lab material,” (84.1%) and “The laboratory quiz helped improve my learning in the gross anatomy lab,” (72.9 %). The survey also had two open-ended questions in which themes included identifying weaknesses and students found that creating questions helped enhance their learning.
Conclusion: The students’ perspectives regarding the implementation of low stakes quizzing were generally positive with suggestions for improving the process. Students agreed (84.1% strongly agreed and agreed) that the quiz encouraged recall of the associated material. Review of survey responses showed the students found the quizzes useful in terms of clinical relevance, helping to identify weaknesses, and recall. Regarding creating quiz questions students found that it helped them conceptualize the material.
Significance/Implication: Increasing student motivation without the weight of a grade was a benefit of utilizing the low-stakes quiz. Per feedback, instilling clear directions and format similar to that of what students see on their lab practical could help students’ academic performance.