Upper division Genetics courses, particularly the molecular genetics section, can be challenging for students. Students often come to class unprepared and neglect pre-class reading assignments. To address this, we incorporated weekly homework assignments from the publisher's website into the syllabus. These assignments included multiple-choice and matching questions, with points awarded for completion. We hypothesized that these homework assignments would improve performance, particularly among C (70-79%) and D (60-69%) students. We compared final exam grades from semesters with and without homework assignments, categorizing students into A (above 90%), B (80-89%), C (70-79%) and D (60-69%) groups based on Exam 1 results. Although 67% of students (N=43) felt the assignments helped prepare for class, 28% admitted to clicking through answers. No significant differences in final exam performance were observed between the homework-assigned and control groups. This suggests that incentivized homework can enhance readiness, its impact on performance needs further investigation.
