Pop Quizzical: Does Authoring Questions for Peers Improve Learning in Introductory Statistics?

Engaging students is critical to fulfilling the learning objectives of any course and is particularly challenging in a remote learning environment. To foster engagement in an introductory statistics course and for weekly participation marks, we employed the online software Quizzical, where students create multiple choice questions based on lecture material that will be answered by their peers. In this paper, we investigate whether the engagement level of Quizzical has any positive association with formal test performance (quiz, midterm, and final) in a large first year introductory statistic course, adjusting for their attitude toward statistics as measured pre-course. We also analyze end-of-term survey data containing qualitative comments on students’ perceptions of Quizzical.