I used this approach midway through the term to emphasize to students how important it was to pay attention to the feedback on the assessments. I analyzed their relative performance on assessment 5 to Quiz B question 2.

The two questions were:

assessment 5: In the context of cellular respiration, why do we breathe in O2 and exhale CO2?

QuizB-2: Describe the path of oxygen from the air to oxidative phosphorylation. How is O2 used in cellular respiration?

The results are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. A set of queries was done on the database to look for the relationship between the performance on assessment 5 and subsequent performance on Quiz B question 2.There were 152 students who did both questions.The intervals are calculated to include the higher value.

A 0-1
Q 0-1

82

A 0-1
Q 1-2

14

A 0-1
Q 2-3

9

A 1-2
Q 0-1

15

A 1-2
Q 1-2

16

A 1-2
Q 2-3

5

A 2-3
Q 0-1

2

A 2-3
Q 1-2

3

A 2-3
Q 2-3

6
did worse on quiz did same
on quiz		 did better on quiz

The major point of this for the class was that 82 students didn't improve at all. Those students need to pay attention to the assessment. I also emphasized that I was pleased with the performance of the 28 students who did improve.