Building an Economic Theoretical Framework to Link Quizzes, Effort Investment, and Learning Outcomes

摘要

Using an economic theory (theory of producer choice), a basic theoretical model is constructed to illustrate how and why quizzes can affect a student's behavior in effort-investment and learning outcomes. The theoretical evidence demonstrated that quizzes can improve students' exam performance and enhance their investment in effort, and that unannounced-quizzes may most likely increase student in-class effort relative to announced-quizzes; while announced-quizzes may most likely enhance student out-of-class effort relative to unannounced-quizzes. In addition, this study looks at how different types of quizzes may serve as different effective instructional methods for student learning, and seeks to explain why student efforts are suboptimal absent a quiz. More importantly, this study frames an economic theoretical background for quizzes, which can be useful in constructing empirical models for further investigations of this issue.