Improving student outcomes using automated feedback in a first-year economics class

The assessment literature advocates utilising formative assessment strategies to support and enhance student learning. This study uses online practice tests with inbuilt feedback, that students could repeatedly use, as a formative feedback strategy in a first-year introductory microeconomics module. The key question explored is whether repeated engagement with online practice tests had a statistically significant impact on students’ subsequent performance on a summative assessment. Quantitative engagement and performance data (N = 223) were collected from a cohort of first-year students. An analysis of this data reveals that engaging with the online practice test multiple times has a statistically significant impact on final performance. Controlling for the mid-term grade, on average, each cycle of ‘seeking and acting’ increases grades in the final exam by 1.3 % (p = 0.003). Hence, the data suggests that incorporating multiple opportunities to take an online practice test, which includes feedback, is an important feature of the strategy. A smaller sample of qualitative survey data (N = 131) reveals that these economics students hold traditional views of feedback with little awareness of their own role in seeking and acting on feedback. We argue that formative practice tests have the potential to support the development of student feedback literacy.