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,…

In this study, the authors investigate the impact of the Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique (IF-AT) on student learning outcomes in principles of microeconomics classes. The IF-AT enables students to receive immediate feedback and to retry questions for partial credit. The authors use a randomized experiment to evaluate the effect of the…

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 "Test of Financial Literacy" (TFL) was created to measure the financial knowledge of high school students. Its content is based on the standards and benchmarks stated in the "National Standards for Financial Literacy" (Council for Economic Education 2013). The test development process involved extensive item writing and…

Modern economics courses require high mathematical proficiency, and low proficiency may reduce grades or cause students to avoid economics courses. The article's authors sought to improve students' mathematical skills and grades with a simple intervention based on repeated quizzing of building-block concepts. They analyzed data from four semesters…

In this article, the authors present the adaptation and validation processes conducted to render the American "Test of Financial Literacy" (TFL) suitable for use in Germany (TFL-G). First, they outline the translation procedure followed and the various cultural adjustments made in line with international standards. Next, they present…

Survey results from a national sample of economics instructors describe the grading policies and practices in principles of economics courses. The survey results provide insights about absolute and relative grading systems used by instructors, the course components and their weights that determine grades, and the type of assessment items used for…

Contemporary pedagogy encourages instructors to move away from memorization to teaching the ability to "do economics." In such an environment, students are taught to apply knowledge of economic measurement, the economic model, and economic policy to analyze current events and policies. In this article, the authors build on existing…

Economic views held by the general public tend to differ significantly from those of economic experts. Would these differences fade away if people were exposed to some economic instruction? In this article, the authors identify college students' preconceptions about economic issues at the beginning of the semester, verify their persistence…

In this article, the authors aim to identify the causal effect of the use of graded problem sets on academic performance of Spanish students. The identification strategy relies on an experiment in which the authors exploit variation arising from observing the performance of nearly 300 students taking the same class during the same semester and…

Instructors often debate the merits of alternate grading policies such as dropping the lowest exam or offering an additional exam to replace the lowest score. To date, there has been little research conducted on the impact of these policies on performance. In this study, the author investigates student performance in intermediate macroeconomics…

In this article, the authors illustrate how incentives can improve student performance in introductory economics courses. They implemented a policy experiment in a large introductory economics class in which they reminded students who scored below an announced cutoff score on the midterm exam about the risk of failing the course. The authors…

This study created an experimental design with which students can empirically assess their risk behavior with respect to exam grades within an expected utility framework. Specifically, the authors analyzed students' risk preferences associated with taking exams and earning a "risky" unknown grade versus not taking exams and instead…

The authors ask whether writing a report on a classroom experiment increases a student's performance in an end-of-course test. To answer this question, the authors analyzed data from a first-year undergraduate course based on classroom experiments and found that writing a report has a large positive benefit. They conclude, therefore, that it is…

This article compares the effectiveness of online and paper-based assignments and tutorials using summative assessment results. All of the students in a large managerial economics course at National University of Ireland, Galway were asked to do six assignments online using Aplia and to do two on paper. The authors examined whether a student's…