4 simple steps to make your students addicted to online tests

Tests, often create fear and anxiety amongst students. When done right, frequent testing can help students remember information longer. There are lots of cognitive theories which help in getting this done right.

At Testpress, we’ve experimented with few of these and have observed excellent results with respect to student’s performance. Following are some simple steps which will make your students get addicted to attending online tests.

Trigger

Nir Eyal in his book “Hooked” has explained how an addiction / Habit can be formed using a Hook Model. He explains Trigger(Either External or Internal) as an important factor for forming a habit.

In our case, we want to make writing tests as a habit for the students. How can this be applied to getting a student to write a test?

• A simple email / mobile push notification about the newly added test.
• Call to Action link to start the exam with a single click.

From our research, this simple trigger improved the test attempts by 400%. We have experimented this in a renowned coaching institute. The number of test attempts increased from 5000 to a staggering 20000. Most of the attempts were started immediately after the time of the trigger.

Short Tests

Summative Assessments are long tests and are usually used to evaluate students. Students get demotivated when they are provided long summative test during the initial phase of preparation. As a result, students tend to put less effort towards their studies and for their future academic progress.

Formative Assessments are short tests which are usually provided as practice tests. Since the tests are short with no scoring, students feel less stressed to give an attempt. A study conducted at the University of Texas, Austin, shows that daily online tests with proper feedback (i.e Providing proper explanations for the answers) have proven to improve the performance and long-term retention of the subject.

Frequency

Habits are not created but built upon. The frequency of tests plays an important role in forming the habit.

One of our clients started providing free daily short tests (10 questions) for 100 days. The trigger was provided at the same time every day. The number of students attempting the short tests started growing exponentially.

Subscribers for their online tests increased from 0 to 10,000 in a short span of time. 75% of their subscribers have successfully attempted 100% of their course contents. This is extraordinary compared to 5.5% of MOOC completion rates.

Motivation

Humans are by nature social animals. Our brains are wired to seek rewards that make us feel accepted, attractive, important and included.

During the initial stages of preparation, students should get motivated to write the next test. Questions for the tests should be kept relatively easy. Awarding virtual rewards for tests incentivize students to take more tests.

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