Are You Ready for Your Studies - Are we Assessing Students Readiness? An evaluation of the usefulness of the Level 2 ARFY quizzes

The Are You Ready for Your Studies Quizzes have recently been implemented to help students decide whether they are ready to study a module.

There are usually three parts to such quizzes, which have a varying number of questions. In Part 1 students are asked a few general questions about their previous experiences. In Part 2 students are asked more specific questions related to a set of learning outcomes. In Part 3 they are asked about how they found the test. After they are done students are given a score and a general impression of whether they are ready for the module.

The aim of this project is to evaluate the usefulness of such quizzes for the core Q67 level 2 modules. Are the quizzes really assessing the students’ readiness to start studying their level 2 modules? What impact have these quizzes had on the modules? The study will focus particularly on modules with low retention and/or students’ satisfaction such as M250, TT284 and M269. The project will investigate the success of such diagnostic quizzes, measures of success to be used are :

1. retention and progression of students to Level 3 or other Level 2 modules on the pathways;
2. students perceptions of their preparedness for their Level 2;

More specific aims are to:

• Investigate the success of using the diagnostic quizzes and their role in preparing students for their Level 2 modules.
• Establish if any correlation exists between levels of student engagement and attainment with the modules at Level 2 and success in the diagnostic quizzes.
• Investigate if there is any gender discrepancy in the quiz results, are male or female students more likely to appear more or less prepared based on the quiz results.
• Does the level of apparent preparedness follow through to the final results and/or retention?