The Impact of Crossword Puzzles on Students' Performance: Does Pre-exposure to Puzzles Matter?

The educational benefits which accrue from the use of crossword puzzles are well documented in literature. The following are some of the benefits that have been reported: increased students' interests in course material, improvement in students' marks, and improvement in critical thinking skills of the students. In establishing the advantages of using crossword puzzles in the various phases of teaching and learning, many of the studies found in literature have typically used crossword puzzles in their teaching before using it again as part of their assessment process. In this article, a comparative analysis of the performance of two groups of students registered for a particular subject are performed to observe the effect of using crossword puzzles as a means of assessment. To achieve this objective one group was accessed using crossword puzzles and the other one was assessed using the traditional methods. However, none of the groups were subjected to crossword puzzles during the teaching of the subject. The results indicate that the students who were assessed using crossword puzzles performed significantly better than the other group. It can therefore be inferred that crossword puzzles may be used as an assessment tool without necessarily exposing the students to crossword puzzles.