Yacapaca

I am really excited about these two new metrics added to the Results page. They give you a view of each student you have not had before, and which you can use today to improve the quality of their learning.

Both columns are sortable: click the up/down arrows in the column header.

Over/Under-Confidence

This column tells you the accuracy of a student’s self-assessment. It measures the difference between the score the student predicted, and the actual score. A perfect score is zero. A positive score indicates over-confidence and a negative score indicates under-confidence.

Students who are habitually over-confident are at greatest risk of not revising adequately. Give them consistent praise or rewards for improving the accuracy of their predictions. Students who are habitually under-confident may be trying to protect themselves from criticism or disappointment, and should be encouraged to welcome wrong answers as an opportunity to learn, rather than as failure.

In both cases, look for the student’s general pattern over time rather than an individual result, and encourage students to get into the habit of considered prediction. This will deliver big dividends come revision time.

Use an occasional reward for a perfect “0” score as a way to draw attention to the self-assessment feature.

Improvement from first to last result

If students have had more than one attempt at a quiz, this measures the difference between the first and last attempt. From time to time you may wish to motivate students to study effectively between quiz attempts by rewarding the highest improvement in the class. This enables to you to celebrate an entirely different group of students from your usual top-scorers.

Tips on making use of the Improvement feature:

• Offer rewards for the best improver, but only occasionally, and at random intervals. You don’t want to inadvertently train students to fluff their first attempt and thus boost improvement.
• Announce any reward only after the first attempt, for the same reason.
• Encourage team working between attempts so that students will coach each other, and compare answers from their first attempt.

There is a complete guide to the Results page in the Help Wiki.