If You Take the Quiz, the Exam Is Lighter

How to make a course on balance sheets and budgeting, complex and demanding topics, more attractive? For Luca Scarani, Professor at the Bocconi Department of Accounting, awarded by the University for innovation in teaching, the answer was almost natural, given his passion for information technology. By using digital tools and in particular the potential offered by the Blackboard platform.

"Class lessons are dense and fast-paced, and we cannot overly rely on our memory which is inherently short-term", says Scarani, "so in my classes for second-year undergraduate students, I introduced an intermediate assessment method with tests and actual quizzes, which enable students to do away with some of the exercises for the final exam. In this way, during finals they have more time available to focus on the tougher questions". The method was not only stimulating but also effective, as Scarani explains: "The quality of students improved, as did their interest in the subject. We invested heavily in technology, and since we got started in the 2018/2019 academic year, we found ourselves at an advantage when the pandemic forced everyone to go online ".

"The method introduced by Prof. Scarani proved functional and efficient ", adds Orazio Gianmarco Olivieri, at that time student of the BSc in Economics and Management and now enrolled in the MSc in Finance,"because it gave a strong incentive to study gradually and continuously, thus avoiding the final cramming that we students often resort to when trying to get ready for an exam. Although the quizzes at first perplexed some of us", says the student, "they proved useful tools to keep up with the pace of the program. They also stimulated interaction between us, because they were often starting points for discussion".