Enhancing exam performance by integrating test and presentation preparations: a test of Herzberg's Motivator-Hygiene Theory.

• Author: Eveleth, Daniel M.
• Position: Report

1. BACKGROUND

   In place of traditional "principles" courses, our University offers an introductory Integrated Business Curriculum (IBC). The program consists of seventeen credits: nine and eight for the first and second semesters, respectively. IBC has six sequential modules over the course of an academic year. The modules, collectively, replace principles of finance, human resources/management, information systems, marketing, operations management, international business, and quantitative methods. We use a 5-person faculty team to teach IBC, which involves one specialist from each of the first five functional areas listed previously. By eliminating unnecessary topic redundancies, we "save" four credit hours for other curricular purposes. Thus, approximately twenty-one credits of material have been incorporated within the 17-credit, year-long course.

   Students work individually and in self-selected teams. IBC contains three team projects per semester, each requiring a written or Web-based report, an in-class oral presentation, or a poster session presentation. Because of the vast quantity of information covered quickly, as well as the inherent increase in complexity (due to integrative topical coverage), we give tests every three weeks. Exams are given Wednesday evenings, are dominantly essay, and take two hours. Several potential essay questions are provided to students one week prior to the test, and a subset of slightly modified essays (stratified quota sample) is randomly drawn at the time the exam is given.

   Students would strongly prefer to have no class on the Wednesday of exam weeks, so they can use normal class time preparing for the evening test. However, with a two-hour exam, that leaves one "orphan" hour that needs to be covered during normal class hours the day of a test. The semester of this research, the faculty team decided to have two student teams per exam day give presentations of "augmenting" material during the daytime hour (6-9 hours prior to the evening test). Specifically, each presentation topic related closely to a particular essay question(s) which would be included on that evening's test. Selected topics (negotiated between the team and mentor) related to concepts which needed redundancy and/or clarification. A mentor worked closely with each team, helping to clarify difficult (i.e., frequently missed) concepts.

   We believed that learning by doing was beneficial to the presenting teams, and that having concepts explained in a slightly different way by students would produce improved understanding by the class. However, there was no assurance that the related question(s) to one's presentation would be drawn. We believed that the assigned presentation (and thus, exam) topics warranted additional time, with reinforcement of related material previously covered by a faculty member. As an example, students learn the concept of segmenting markets into subgroups of buyers with similar wants and needs. They have no difficulty understanding the various bases/variables on which markets are segmented (e.g., demographics, geographics, usage rates, etc.) However, they have more difficulty understanding why a particular basis is more useful in certain industries than is an alternative basis. Thus, a presentation concerning criteria for selecting segmentation variables, and/or circumstances under which segmentation is not warranted, could be useful and interesting topic to both the presenting team and their student peers.

   We believed that if a student team started working early, its members would have sufficient time to prepare for both the presentation and the test. Our rationale was that as teams got ready for presentations, their members would be studying in depth at least one question related to the exam. Furthermore, other students would benefit from listening to in-depth presentations within three to six hours of the test. Presenting teams were strongly encouraged to develop a handout for other class members, outlining their presentation.

   It was our intent (hope) that the students would benefit from same-day presentations, and that those benefits would be manifested by higher exam scores. We also anticipated that student reactions to the idea of student presentations concurrent with exam preparation could be mixed, at best. Certainly, adding an assignment due concurrently with a major exam could increase stress. It has been documented that performance is often superior under conditions of moderate stress, rather than under either low or high stress. A question to be answered was whether the additional pressure of making and delivering a presentation would put students "over the top," and hinder performance on the accompanying test or serve to motivate higher performance.

   We deduced that whether same-day presentations would lead to better or worse performance might easily depend on students' preparation. If one increased total study effort (presumably starting earlier), his performance could be enhanced. Alternatively, if one became overwhelmed, and reduced exam study time, it could hamper both motivation and test performance. A more detailed discussion of the role of stress follows.

2. BRIEF OVERVIEW OF STRESS MODELS

   Stress can be an ambiguous term. It has alternately been defined as both an independent and a dependent variable (c.f., Cox, 1990), as well as the interaction of stimuli and responses (Dewe, 1992). Stimulus-based definitions define stress in terms of events or...