InQuizitor Independent Research Results

InQuizitor Raises Standards & Promotes Learning

Northern Arizona University conducted a study on the effectiveness of InQuizitor in 2007 in four 7th grade classes across two middle schools in the Southwestern United States. Their study shows:

• Students who used InQuizitor had a greater growth in achievement than those who did not use the software
• Students were able to retain the information they had learned
• InQuizitor promotes student learning in a fun and motivating manner

Key Findings

• Pupils using InQuizitor demonstrated a 71% improvement in test scores, compared to 17% in non-InQuizitor users.
• Using InQuizitor for study and revision raised the general school population attainment to the same level as the gifted and talented group not using InQuizitor.
• Using InQuizitor, some members of the general school population attained higher test scores than some gifted and talented pupils.

Study Description

In order to test the efficacy of InQuizitor as a learning tool, the investigation was designed with a basic research plan of comparison between control and treatment groups.

The investigation was designed with a basic research plan of comparison between control and treatment groups.

The research design consisted of pretest and posttest comparisons between two control groups that did not use InQuizitor for practice and two treatment groups that did use InQuizitor for practice.

Two sets of "paired" teachers were invited to participate in the study at two different middle schools within a school district in the South-western United States. In this case, "paired" is defined as two teachers that taught the same grade level and content at different schools. The purpose of utilizing "pairs" was to investigate the impact of the use of InQuizitor to support practice of content that might differ from traditional classroom practice.

Although paired teachers taught the same content, only one of each pair used InQuizitor with his or her class to practice the targeted content.

Participants

The two study schools selected serve the largest population of middle school students in the district, with approximately 800 students per school.

These schools have similar demographics in terms of students' ethnicity and socio-economic status. However, the participant classes at the control site were members of a gifted and talented program, while their counterpart treatment participant classes were more academically aligned with the general population.

A total of 204 students took part in the investigation.

Procedure

Once the pretest was administered, the paired teachers taught their shared content. However, one of the paired teachers used InQuizitor to facilitate practice of content knowledge, while the other teacher used traditional methods of practice (ie introduction of terms, note taking by students, and discussions of ideas taken from historical writings and/or events).

In other words, once teacher instruction with the targeted content was provided, learners within the control groups used traditional methods to practice their understandings of the content while the learners within the treatment group used InQuizitor for their practice.

After the prescribed practice time of three to four weeks, a common posttest was administered to both groups of students and results were analyzed to account for any student achievement difference between the control and treatment groups.

Quotes

"the students were very excited about playing with the software"

"I am very excited to see my students asking to practice more content material so they can get to play InQuizitor"

"definitively learning has also increased"