Weekly Low-Stakes Assessments Promote Student Motivation, Engagement, and Learning in Asynchronous Online Courses

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many universities are increasing offerings of asynchronous online courses, including encouraging the modification of existing courses into an online format. With a move from in-person to online course delivery comes the challenge of maintaining and creating new ways of promoting student motivation and engagement to facilitate their attainment of course learning goals. This paper discusses the development and impact of an instructional intervention made in two large-enrollment active learning introductory courses at a Canadian university that were transformed to an asynchronous online course modality during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. In-class activities were redesigned based on best practices in online teaching into weekly low-stakes, formative "class engagement activities" (CEAs). The study used a mixed-methods research design to understand the impact that CEAs have on student motivation, engagement, and perceptions of learning. Results demonstrate that despite the low grading weight of the CEAs, the activities achieved high levels of student engagement, which impacted final exam performance, motivation to learn, and a perceived deeper understanding of course content. We conclude that CEAs are a relatively low-effort strategy for instructors to engage students in their course materials in the asynchronous online course environment and recommend best practices for incorporating these assignments into course design.