Supporting Student-Centered Learning Through Formative Assessments
Find out how faculty at UNC adopted ScholarRx's formative assessments and improved [x] in just [x] months.
The Situation
How to Identify Struggling Students
Kurt Gilliland, Ph.D., Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, wanted to find a way to provide frequent formative assessments in his classroom in order to identify and assist struggling students.
When students don't seek out resources and help it can be difficult to know they're struggling, especially in a flipped or fully-remote classroom.
Key identifiers of students who need extra support:
Memorization
Trying to memorize details but unable to anticipate how they’ll be applied
Prioritization
Putting off critical thinking and clinical reasoning until later
Trust
Worrying that their curriculum is organized differently than many review sources
Helping students gain access to the right learning resources is critical to their success, faculty success, and institutional success.
The Solution
The Effectiveness of Weekly Tests
UNC faculty found that many students didn’t purchase review sources until weeks before Step — so they decided to provide ScholarRx to students and set out to help them use it along the way
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UNC incorporated ScholarRx into its curriculum, providing the whole platform for its first-year medical students.
Faculty decided to create a Formative Opportunity — they assigned the students ten questions every week that pertained to their curriculum. Their recommendation was that students take the assessments slowly, in “tutor mode,” applying critical and clinical thinking skills, and studying the rationale and its references, as opposed to rushing through as if it were a real exam.
The results proved to be beneficial for both educators and students.
The Results
Outcomes of Strengthening Student Learning
ScholarRx Assessments Helped Educators:
ScholarRx Assessments Helped Students:
Utilizing the ScholarRx weekly tests allowed educators to guide students and strengthen their skills, helping them get one step closer to being successful in the next step of their learning journey.
Summary
ScholarRx Bridges the Gap for UNC
The results of the formative weekly assessments over the last few years have allowed the UNC team of Emily Moorefield, Evan Raff, Kathy Barnhouse, Kurt Gilliland, and others to see both performance and completion rates. Students who score a few (or zero) correct answers receive a follow-up email, which allows curriculum leaders to better gauge which students need more help.
Taking an assertive approach, the team refers struggling students to academic coaches, which has gone a long way in helping students stay on track and reach their full potential.
With a goal of identifying struggling students and helping them bridge any learning gaps, the UNC team turned to ScholarRx’s formative assessments.
Just by adopting weekly assessments consisting of 10 questions, the UNC team was able to find and assist students who need extra help to succeed in their medical school journey.