Statistical Demonstration of Superiority of High-Frequency Short-Tests in Assessment When Teaching Statistics to Enhance Higher Student Pass Rates

Abstract

When facilitating learning, quick and small assessments can assist to detect areas that require further reinforcement and also identify students who need extra help in understanding the concepts taught. This paper demonstrates with Statistics, a difficult subject to pass at Higher Education Institution (HEI) level, that when these tests are administered at high frequencies and in large numbers, students are boosted to perform better, seemingly because there is no chance to pause learning. In addition to the higher performance shown, the students’ marks were more stable when checked using the Coefficient of Variation (CV) measure. This was an indication that in the case of many assessment exercises, the higher student performances obtained were also more reliable and had a better chance to be replicated when the exercise was repeated.