International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Review

This study investigated the influence of a “challenge event” (treatment) on final grades for 103 students in an upper-level quantitative methods course required of all business and information systems majors at a small, liberal arts college. There were two semesters used as the control (traditional coverage of returning test) and four semesters where students were encouraged to challenge and justify responses that had been marked incorrect (treatment group). A traditional review of the returned test was not conducted. Historically, the students taking the quantitative methods course struggle with the critical thinking components of the course. The grades in the control group ranged from 66.34 to 70.42. After the treatment (challenge event) the final grades ranged from 78.97 – 81.38. The difference in the final grades between the control and treatment groups was statistically significant with p < .000. This paper discusses the treatment (challenge event) and provides an analysis of the statistics used to test the impact of the treatment.