As my students are getting ready for their final exam, I assign a MyMathLab quiz that is connected to a personalized homework assignment. There are 36 questions on the quiz, with 136 related questions on the homework assignment. For each question a student gets right on the quiz, all related problems (typically 4) are removed from the homework assignment. This allows students to focus on the problems they struggled with, which is one of the most important factors in preparing for a cumulative exam.

Certain students have earned the right to have a quiz inspection before they turn in the quiz. When they finish the quiz, I ask them to email me before they submit the quiz. I then pull up their quiz in my grade book, and tell the students which problems are incorrect. If there are typos, I tell the students what they are. If I can tell what a student has done wrong, I let them know. Otherwise I let the student know where they can go to review that type of problem. This gives students a chance for remediation.

Only the first quiz attempt loads the homework, so getting a chance to rework the quiz before submitting it is much appreciated.

It does take a little time to do this. I had approximately 30 quiz inspections this semester. Luckily, students make many of the same types of errors, so I am able to copy & paste much of my feedback.

I’d encourage you to give this a shot. I got the idea from an instructor (Rob Knight) while playing cards at the CMC3 conference in Monterey. You never know what you are going to learn while playing cards. Rob mentioned that he did this for every quiz. As a man of moderation, I only do this for this one quiz in particular.

– George