When it’s the first time you try to build a quiz, it will be a very exciting and a hard mission, and it definitely will be more exciting experience when you create it via LMS, like moodle.
This assignment required us to create a quiz using moodle tools, with specific requirements (timed quiz, general feedback, different kind of questions, etc.), I thought it will require some IT experience or some programing skills, but it didn’t.
After watching several tutoring videos on YouTube, I began structuring the quiz.
Setting up the required options is something important for course administration, while creating the questions was the challengeable part of the assignment.
I tried to gather all the valuable information we have learnt in this course about creating assessments and how to provide a helpful feedback for students. Gibbs and Simson writing was the most inspiring resource for me in this assignment.
The procedure of creating the assessment went through several steps:
- Creating the questions:
This step took the longest time and the deepest thinking of me. I wanted the questions to stimulate different levels of thinking from students.
Some of the questions required simple recalling important information that I wanted to make sure that my students have studied; others required critical thinking and comparing. The types of questions that Moodle provide are very suitable for my goals.
Through my work, I remembered what Gibbs and Simson mentioned that “coursework marks are a better predictor of long term learning of course content than are exams.” (Gibbs, 2005, p:7) and this is achieved in my course. The final mark of the course is based on course work (65%) and the summative assignment (35%).
2. Providing a general feedback:
This step is as much important as creating the questions. I believe that “teaching meant giving feedback” (Gibbs and Simson, 2005, p: 8). I wanted to create a feedback for every wrong answer to provide some explanation for students why it is wrong, but finally I assigned only a general feedback. I remembered that “In most forms of distance education, feedback on frequent assignments is the main interactive component of teaching and the Open University has placed great emphasis on frequent assignments, training and paying tutors to provide comprehensive feedback, and monitoring the quality of this feedback” (Gibbs and Simson, 2005, p: 9), so I tried to make my feedbacks as clear and helpful as much as I can. I also paved the way for students to send me any inquiries or explanations they need.
3. Setting up the quiz via Moodle:
It was a unique experience for me. It took a long time of me and many true and false tries, but finally I did it. I liked the available features in moodle like the time and attempts limitations, question shuffling, immediate or later feedback, general or specific feedback, statistics, grading options, and the several kinds of available questions.
If you like to take a look, this is the link: http://moodle.met.ubc.ca/course/view.php?id=497
In conclusion, learning is an endless trip with many stages and obstacles and I think that it’s the most wonderful trip in the human’s life.
Reference:
Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf