The Effects of Online Assignments and Weekly Deadlines on Student Outcomes in a Macroeconomics Course

Laurie A. Miller and James R. Schmidt

The American Economist, 2021, vol. 66, issue 1, 46-60

Abstract: This study examined how weekly, externally set deadlines affected the completion of adaptive learning assignments and student outcomes in an introductory macroeconomics course. We imposed different deadline schemes for the same adaptive learning assignments in two sections of the course. One section was given flexible deadlines and the other section was given rigid weekly deadlines. We found that weekly deadlines did not affect assignment completions or total points earned on unit exams. We investigated how the adaptive learning assignments affected student retention of material. A measure of staying on pace in the course provided a positive effect on the comprehensive final exam for students with weekly deadlines. The weekly deadlines may not have influenced assignment completions but consistent engagement with the flow of topics through the course increased student knowledge retention. Regardless of deadline type, completions of adaptive learning assignments positively affected outcomes on the unit exams and final exam. JEL Classifications : A20, A22

Keywords: commitment device; adaptive learning assignment; student performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0569434520968250 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:amerec:v:66:y:2021:i:1:p:46-60

DOI: 10.1177/0569434520968250

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The American Economist from Sage Publications
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().