Used correctly, assessments play a vital role in the success of a course: they provide valuable feedback to students regarding their knowledge gaps, encourage deeper understanding of the material, help students to develop critical thinking, and guide students to accomplish a course's learning goals. They also provide a signal to future employers,…

Instructors may use low-cost, light-touch strategies to help students achieve optimal effort in demanding upper-level courses. The authors of this study exploit an intervention that provides a series of personalized feedback emails to students about their relative performance, which is tied to approving messages or tips that encourage improvement.…

The authors of this article examine the potential for increased student learning and retention through more frequent assignments. They conduct a field experiment that investigates whether student knowledge retention can be improved by increasing the frequency of homework assignments, motivating students to have more exposure to the material, and…