Effect of Assignment Choice on Student Academic Performance in an Online Class
Letting online grad students pick flash cards or a study guide did not raise grades.
01Research in Context
What this study did
MacNaul and team ran an online graduate class. Students could pick flash cards or a study guide for each unit.
The researchers used an alternating-treatments design. Grades were compared across the two formats.
What they found
Choice made no difference. Test scores stayed the same whether students used flash cards or the guide.
Students liked having options, but their grades did not improve.
How this fits with other research
Schena et al. (2024) saw the same null result. They swapped prep guides for pop-quizzes and still found no grade boost.
Kim et al. (2025) explain why. Their review shows choice helps only when sizing, timing, and effort line up with past reinforcement. In this class both tools felt equal, so choice added no value.
Varley et al. (1980) showed pigeons work harder just because a choice is there. The bird data look like a contradiction, but the species, setting, and payoff size all differ.
Why it matters
Before you add choice to a lesson, test if the options truly differ in effort or payoff. If both paths feel the same, save your planning time and just pick one format. Use quick student polls first; only build choice when preferences split sharply.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Choice of assignment has been shown to increase student engagement, improve academic outcomes, and promote student satisfaction in higher education courses (Hanewicz, Platt, & Arendt, Distance Education, 38(3), 273–287, 2017). However, in previous research, choice resulted in complex procedures and increased response effort for instructors (e.g., Arendt, Trego, & Allred, Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, 8(1), 2–17, 2016). Using simplified procedures, the current study employed a repeated-measures with an alternating-treatments design to evaluate the effects of assignment choice (flash cards, study guide) on the academic outcomes of 42 graduate students in an online, asynchronous course. Slight differences between conditions were observed, but differences were not statistically significant. The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40617-021-00566-8.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2021 · doi:10.1007/s40617-021-00566-8