Amy Homkes-Hayes, Lead Innovation Advocate
Since Problem Roulette’s launch as an Office of Academic Innovation tool, students have attempted 1.7 million multiple choice exam prep problems across 10 University of Michigan courses. These impressive numbers speak to the utility value of a tool created by August Evrard, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Physics and Astronomy, to help prepare students for exams in a low-stakes, easy to use test prep application. In examining the future of Problem Roulette, we are committed, not only to examine ways in which we can continue to grow the volume of problems solved, but equally the efficacy with which we prepare University of Michigan Students for multiple choice exams.
Study Alone, and now…Study in Groups!
In that spirit we have introduced an exciting and significant new feature in Problem Roulette: Group Study. Group Study enables University of Michigan students the opportunity to form groups and study for midterm and final exams using Problem Roulette. Admittingly, students have told us that they were using the platform to study in groups in the past; however they were only using one student’s Problem Roulette account to work on answering problems huddled around a shared computer screen. We figured there was a better way, and wanted to give students the opportunity to study in groups either in-person (as they had been), and virtually (to accommodate, say, if some of your studymates are different parts of campus).
Group Study enables students to use Problem Roulette to set-up and execute group study sessions. New features include:
- Invite anyone in the University of Michigan community to join a study group.
- Everyone within the study group gets the same practice problem in real time. The answer is not revealed until everyone has submitted one.
- Chat with your group mates using the chat feature built within Problem Roulette to help discern why people answered the way they did, and where folks are getting stuck.
- Add practice problems to your Notebook to refer back to at a later time, or to bring to a Study Group Leader, Tutor, GSI, or Faculty.
- Leave a group if you need to, knowing that the group study session will go on.
- Finish a session. Each study group member gets access to analytics about their performance including accuracy by topic, and number of correct and incorrect answers.
We, on the Problem Roulette team, are eager for students to use Group Study mode, and benefit from collaborating with peers as they prepare for multiple choice exams in large courses, while adding to the over one million Problem Roulette problem attempts.
