RESEARCH AND TEACHING Collaborative Testing: Evidence of Learning in a Controlled In-Class Study of Undergraduate Students

Abstract

In collaborative two-stage exams, students complete a test as individuals and then immediately complete the same, or very similar, test in groups. We compared twostage collaborative testing with individual testing to determine which format has a greater effect on student learning in an undergraduate Earth and Ocean Science course. A crossover design allowed students to participate in both the control (individual) and treatment (collaborative) conditions. In both the individual and collaborative conditions, students completed the same set of questions twice, which controlled for any potential performance gain caused by more frequent testing. Learning was measured as the change in students ’ individual performance on questions given in the individual stage and after the midterm, calculated as percent change and normalized change. When students were tested in groups, they showed significantly greater improvement on subsequent individual testing then when tested only as individuals. There was no significant difference in the amount of improvement experienced by “upper, ” “middle, ” or “lower” achieving students as categorized by their first-stage midterm score. Most postsecondary institutions assess student learning with independent testing, that is, students complete the test on their own with no help from peers or outside resources. An alternative to this traditional format is the collaborative test, in which students work together in small groups to answer test questions. In the two-stage exam, perhaps the most common method of collaborative testing, students independently complete a test and then immediately complete the same, or similar, test again in groups of four; a proportion of each student’s grade is assigned to the independent- and group-test sections