The exam/quiz features in Moodle did exactly as advertised. It allowed for a variety of questions to be posted by the course builder and had built in features that allowed for user feedback. As I built the quiz, I had more issues designing the quiz than I did pushing it onto the Moodle. Before I go into my full review, I had a mixed experience with the quiz features. While I found the majority of experience seemless, it felt cumbersome at times and I couldn’t find how to move my quiz to another section! Now to my full reflection.

At first the features frustrated me to a great deal. I couldn’t find options that I wanted. This is to be expected when dealing with new software or web interface in this case. Takes a bit of time to fill in the right forms and check the right boxes. As a user, I was overwhelmed with the immense amount of options. Slowly as I populated the questions it became clear that many of these options were user feedback responses. It was neat to see and reminded me a lot about basic programming language. For example when programing there were a lot of “ifs”, “ands”, etc. Making this connection allowed me to visualize how to provide feedback for my students a lot easier.

The main issue I had was not with the Moodle, although this was the assignment but in making my students write an online quiz that was so long. I forsee issues with providing an online quiz such as the ability to type at a reasonable speed, accessibility to the internet and what the quiz should be focused on.

For many of my technology integrated projects, they have been motivating by themselves. Instructors often use quizes to ensure that students have gone through the material, however, I feel the opportunity for my primary students to even complete some of the unit enough is exciting and motivating enough. As a result not even requiring a quiz.

The quiz was completed as a requirement for this course, however, the benefits of going through the process was beneficial so that I understood it’s features. In the context of my course, however, I could see myself putting a quiz as a guiding piece for sections of my course (ie. Providing direction and focus for my students). I would, however, be open to students working collaboratively (in pairs – face to face or over Skype) to complete this quiz. As a result, I would eliminate the time limit.

The focus of this unit is for students to learn to collaborate, search for information effectively and to demonstrate their understanding of the material in a presentable format.

I felt that GUI could have been simplified initially and had an option for more experienced users. At the same time, one cannot argue with the price of Moodle — free. With this in mind, and the built in functionality of user feedback the Moodle Quiz was useful.  The overall experience was beneficial and could be useful in the future.