A Qualitative Study on How Students Interact with Quizzes and Estimate Confidence on Their Answers

ABSTRACTMany prior work from various disciplines, including computing education, investigated how students interact with quizzes and how their interactions impact their learning outcomes. However, most of their results are based on quantitative analysis which does not offer detailed nuances behind the actual behaviors of students. Some prior studies took a qualitative approach but they focused mainly on students' perception on quizzes in general or student behaviors strictly while they work on the quizzes. Thus, our work conducted a qualitative study on how students interact with quizzes in a broader context, by also including their motivation for doing quizzes and the next steps they take after completing a quiz. By investigating observed student behaviors from the interviews with respect to their performance on the midterm exam, our results revealed a variety of student interactions and how they are related to performance. Our findings also provide some suggestions on how instructors should engage students with quizzes for effective learning.