What is it about?
If you want to learn something, the best way to do that is to practice. Web-based homework management systems offer students useful deliberate practice with detailed and immediate feedback after each of multiple assignment attempts. But does it really increase student learning? Or does it just artificially inflate grades as students game the system? This study of 917 online students found exam scores improved significantly with use of a web-based homework management system. It also found that variance in homework scores explained a high percentage of variance in exam scores. All of this suggests increased student learning.
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Why is it important?
My findings show student learning, as measured by exam performance, increased with multiple homework attempts for a sample of 917 students. This empirical evidence sheds additional light on the question of whether to allow multiple homework attempts, and if so how many.
Perspectives
Before web-based homework management systems, there was no question: Multiple graded homework attempts were impractical and rarely offered. Now with instant automatic grading and feedback, it's possible to offer additional attempts. But just because we can doesn't mean we should. I hope this study sheds new light into how multiple homework attempts may support student learning, particularly for the rapidly growing population of online students.
Kathy Archer
Grand Canyon University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Do Multiple Homework Attempts Increase Student Learning? A Quantitative Study, The American Economist, May 2018, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0569434518774790.
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