Offering excessive extra credit undermines grade validity and student motivation.
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The retrieved evidence includes discussions on managing extra credit to avoid grade inflation and maintaining accurate grades, but provides only partial or indirect support regarding the specific claim that excessive extra credit undermines grade validity and student motivation.
This paper reports the results of a replication experiment on the effectiveness of extra credit pop quizzes within the context of English for specific academic purposes course. In the original experiment, multiple-choice pop quizzes assigned as extra credit were found to be effective at increasing student attendance rates, classroom participation, the pass rate and student satisfaction, without undermining learning objectives or causing grade inflation. This replication sought to maintain these positive results, while mitigating the loss of instructional hours available for formative tasks. This was attempted by converting collaborative writing into unannounced extra credit assignments as substitutes for multiple-choice quizzes. In addition to maintaining the increased level of student effort, awarding extra credit for formative tasks was found to be a more efficient allocation of class time, resulting in a significant increase in student submission of collaborative writing assignments.
Keywords: Extra credit, ESAP, collaborative writing, continuous assessment, higher education.
The extra credit pop quizzes were, thus, conceived as an extrinsic reward for regular class attendance and active participation in the course. The aim of the experiment was to test the effect of the extra credit scheme on student effort —with the assumption that effort is an observable indicator of engagement and/or motivation—and then test whether the expected increase in effort—as measured by both attendance and pop quiz performance —would lead to a higher overall course pass rate and improved average performance on summative course assessment.
The extra credit scheme was designed to incent ive regular attendance and active participation without punishing non-attending students and without causing excessive grade inflation. Ten multiple- choice pop quizzes were administered during lessons in order to test the students’ recall of the field - specific vocabulary, grammar and academic communication strategies that had been previously covered in the lessons and learning material. Only attending students —defined as those who had attended at least 10 of 15 two-hour lessons—were eligible for extra credi t at the end of the semester.
Attending students were awarded half a bonus point added to their portfolio grade for each quiz on which they scored a minimum of 60%. Students were awarded an additional half a point for perfect attendance and/or if they finished the semester on a ‘Top Ten’ list for average quiz scores. After the application of extra credit, students could effectively earn a maximum score of 36 out of 30 points on their portfolio, but because the portfolio assignment only accounted for 25% of the cumulative course grade, the extra credit effectively increased the maximum final grade to 31.5 out of 30 points Ennis, M. J. (2020).
There was also evidence of a positive relationship between effort and both the probability of passing and better performance on summative assessment, where quiz performance was associated with a greater probability of passing and a stronger correlation with end -of-course performance than was mere attendance. Students also expressed generally favourable opinions of the initiative as well as more favourable attitudes towards the course on an evaluation survey. These results were achieved with minimal impact on the average cumulative mark before the addition of extra credit and minimal grade inflation after the addition of extra credit.
Each component of summativ e assessment accounted for 25% of the final grade, students were required to pass both parts of the written exam and the oral exam to pass the course, and one - half a point was added to the portfolio for each passed quiz and for perfect attendance and top-ten quiz performance. The only change to course design was that four of ten multiple -choice extra credit pop quizzes were replaced with collaborative writing tasks, one was replaced with a collaborative presentation outline task, and two were replaced with reading, grammar and vocabulary practice exams, the latter of which were completed in pairs (see Table 6).
In 2015 –16, this data was collected through the submission of a real pop quiz or the submission of a “fake” pop quiz (see explanation below), whereas in 2014-15 a signed attendance sheet was also used on two occasions. In both years, attendance data was recorded in a spreadsheet which also contained student grades on all marked assignments, including the extra credit assignments. Students’ attitudes about the extra credit scheme and the course in general were measured on a five-point Likert scale based upon responses to a course evaluation survey administered after the conclusion of le ssons but prior to the final exam.
J. (2020). Convincing EFL students to practice writing: Assigning collaborative writing tasks as extra credit pop quizzes. Global Journal of Foreign Language Teaching. 10(1), 001-019. https://doi.org/10.18844/gjflt.v10i1.4294 13 overall, would be improved. However, there was only evidence of an increase in average performance on the oral exam,d while net changes for all other components and the average cumulative grade were statistically insignificant (see Table 15). Table 15.
The course attendance rate remained above 70%, the trend in the attendance rate per lesson remained comparatively stable, and d However, even this result would be insignificant if the conservative Dunn-Sidak correction were employed in order to maintain a family wise error rate of 5%. Ennis, M. J. (2020). Convincing EFL students to practice writing: Assigning collaborative writing tasks as extra credit pop quizzes. Global Journal of Foreign Language Teaching. 10(1), 001-019. https://doi.org/10.18844/gjflt.v10i1.4294 14 the pass rate remained above 60%, without resulting in substantial grade inflation or relaxing educational standards.
Purpose Student engagement can be a difficult thing to nurture in an online, asynchronous course. This paper aims to try to encourage a student interaction in such a course, one that additionally is not a requirement for any major or general education plan, the author argues that using extra credit activities can increase student interaction and engagement. Design/methodology/approach Students were given the opportunity to complete extra credit activities of several different types for a small number of extra credit points, the total of which was 5% of the students’ grade in the course. Activities included solo activities, such as playing short online information literacy games and collaborative activities that included posting and responding in a discussion forum. Findings The results were disappointing; only 2 out of 17 students in the sample completed extra credit activities, and those that did so would have received high grades whether or not they completed extra credit. This may be due to the low number of extra credit points available per activity, lack of motivation and other issues. Further study on this topic could help resolve these issues. Originality/value While the results of this study were not what was hoped for, the results and methods may be useful for other instructors of online, for-credit library classes looking for new ways to engage with students.
Gamification, the use of game-based principles to promote learning (Kapp 2012), allows instructors a pathway through which they can maintain curricular rigor while simultaneously fostering strong work habits and soft skill development. In this paper I describe my own experience of gamifying an online linguistics undergraduate course as I sought to combat engagement challenges such as spotty attendance and assignment procrastination. By implementing a gamified bonus level in the course, I was able to reimagine the traditional notion of extra credit in a way that incentivized self-regulation and engagement without creating a high amount of grade inflation in the process. Unlike traditional extra credit which advantages high-performing students, the bonus level sought to provide equity to the lower-performing students at a regional university with a predominant first-generation population.
In looking at the student responses, I realized that providing an equitable classroom experience meant not only offering more flexibility with deadlines but also needed to include proactively helping students build the soft skills needed to be successful in an online course— things like logging in to the course often, staying on top of the assignment schedule, engaging with non-graded course material, and attending office hours.
However, I was also mindful that equity for these students did not equate to simply offering lots of extra credit opportunities for these behaviors because this would likely lead to tremendous amounts of grade inflation (Pynes 2014), making their grades no longer an accurate reflection of their linguistic knowledge. I began reading about the benefits of gamification in educational contexts and decided to gamify my course in 2016. I have since made gamification a mainstay of my course design. 3. Gamification. In its simplest form, gamification is a rewards-based system similar to Skinner’s (1963) concept of operant conditioning.
Utilizing this type of rewards-based gamification means that students must deem the
While the bonus level in some ways functioned like typical extra credit, the fact that it was packaged in the form of a game meant that—similar to an arcade—I could attach large ticket values to desired tasks while the actual real-world point equivalent remained very low. Because students enjoyed seeing their name on the leaderboard and/or the thrill of trying to find Easter eggs in the course modules, they were not as concerned about the tangible reward (i.e. the extra credit points) that they were working toward.
In fact, the conversion rate between virtual tickets and actual points added to their grade was extremely modest, as even the top earners added less than one percentage point to their final grade. In addition to extra credit points, which carried a high ticket-to-points conversation rate, the virtual tickets could also be redeemed for prizes, which had a much lower ticket threshold. These prizes were intended to bring equity to those who otherwise would be heavily disadvantaged in the course.
Most of the bonus level prizes were opportunities for students to return to modules where they had not achieved mastery or perhaps had skipped altogether, which meant that learners had an alternate path and multiple “second chances” to successfully master the course content. Unlike traditional extra credit models, these prizes purposely advantaged low- performing students, particularly those who were having trouble staying on top of their coursework.
For this subset of students, many of whom didn’t opt into the game until much later in the semester, they were not motivated by the game architecture but were instead enticed by the prizes since their grade was suffering and the tickets could earn them a chance to improve it. Nicholson (2015) notes that even this type of rewards-based gamification can be effective when the goal of the game is to teach a skill with real-world value. This is because the player ultimately replaces the external reward with the new skill, which becomes a reward in and of itself.
I did, however, have a colleague who was teaching the exact same course in a non-gamified way. In a cursory comparison of the data from our two sections, I found that my students were more likely to turn in work more than 24 hours in advance of the deadline as compared to his students. Obviously, to be able to make any legitimate claims about the effectiveness of the bonus level, I would need to measure the statistical significance of this difference and would also want to collect data on other criteria, such as timestamps, course logins, attrition rates, final grades, video statistics, etc.
I ultimately concluded that if linguists seek to occupy more space in university core curricula and to widen our reach to non-majors and first-generation students, we must be willing to take on new roles and tackle issues of equity that may be keeping students from hearing the linguistic message that we are so eager to share. References Giroux, Henry A. & David E. Purpel. 1983. The hidden curriculum and moral education: Deception or discovery? Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing. Hardy, Marjorie S. 2002. Extra credit: Gifts for the gifted? Teaching in Psychology 29(3). 233–34. Kapp, Karl. 2012.
The gamification of learning and instruction: Game-based methods and strategies for training and education. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer. Nicholson Scott. 2015. A RECIPE for meaningful gamification. In Torsten Reiners & Lincoln C. Wood (eds.), Gamification in education and business. 1–20. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10208-5_1 North, Sarah. 2019. Understanding students’ self-regulation in asynchronous online learning. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota dissertation. Pynes, Christopher A. 2014. Seven arguments against extra credit. Teaching Philosophy 37(2). 191–214. Skinner, Burrhus Fredric. 1963. Operant behavior. American Psychologist 18. 503–515.
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