Weekly Cumulative Quizzes in Organic Chemistry

A challenge in organic chemistry as well as in other subjects is that a set of fundamental skills is required to master more advanced topics. In an attempt to force students to invest in learning fundamental concepts before working with more advanced topics, we have introduced weekly compulsory quizzes and associated practice tests in our introductory organic chemistry course. The weekly quizzes are cumulative in the sense that the students are tested on the current and all previous topics in each quiz. The aim of the present work is to motivate, describe, and discuss the implementation of these weekly cumulative quizzes and to gain insight into how their use may benefit student learning in the subject. In particular, we seek to disentangle preference and perceived learning when it comes to students' perspectives on the cumulative and frequent nature of the quizzes. We analyzed the use of the weekly cumulative quizzes as well as the practice tests and obtained students' perspectives through evaluation surveys. Usage statistics (from 16 students) indicate that the cumulative quizzes force the students to engage with all previous topics every week, whereas the practice tests that are associated with each topic are mostly used in the week the topic is introduced. Importantly, the students are convinced that the cumulative nature of these quizzes is beneficial to their learning. We document not only a perceived learning benefit (Which do you think is best for your learning?) but also a preference (Which do you like best?) among students for cumulative quizzes vs noncumulative quizzes as well as for weekly quizzes vs quizzes every 2-4 weeks. Despite the low number of students in the present study, weekly cumulative quizzes seem to be a promising tool to build fundamental skills in organic chemistry and other subjects.