Promoting depth of knowledge through a new quiz format to improve problem solving abilities

A novel quiz format is described which is designed to help engineering students improve: (1) problem solving abilities, (2) deep learning, and (3) personal knowledge base. The new quiz format breaks the traditional quiz into two parts, where students are asked to write words that express the limits of their knowledge of the announced quiz topic followed by a short problem solving quiz. The aim of the student is to determine the relationship between the demonstrated knowledge base and the quality of the solution of the quiz problem. An extended aim is to develop a model that describes the relationships between the knowledge base and problem solving success in order to develop training interventions.