PICHNET

In Cameroon, no exam is more important than the baccalauréat, which serves as the gateway to professional and higher-education aspirations. We build on existing literature on practice tests to evaluate how SMS-based quizzes could help students prepare for the baccalauréat. We find that students used our practice tests for formative assessment, as a prompt for recall and review of study material, and as a focus of collaborative study sessions.

We created a system to send regularly-spaced, multiple-choice questions to students’ own mobile devices to help secondary school students in Cameroon with exam practice via either SMS or WhatsApp. Students’ participation rates were heavily impacted by trust in the intervening organization and perceptions of personal security in the socio-technical environment. WhatsApp-based users had significantly lower participation as compared to SMS.