Creating an assessment in Moodle using the the Moodle quiz activity was definitely a challenge – which I discuss in more depth in my blog. Here I will review and reflect on the process I went through designing my quiz using the ‘options’ available with the Moodle quiz tool whilst trying to be mindful of both the learning objectives of this course and the 10 Conditions of learning in the Gibbs & Simpson article:
Quiz Objective: My goal here is to give the students an opportunity to assess their ‘learning’, not for me to assess them. Therefore, as much as I have left options for them to ‘cheat’, it really comes down to the classic axiom, ‘they are only cheating themselves’.
Lesson: I have chosen to introduce the quiz using a lesson and linking the quiz to it so that I can explain the content, layout, timing, expectations and scoring to the students. By doing introducing the quiz in this way, and allowing a minimum of 24 hours for the students to process this information (the test will not open until the day after the lesson does), the students should well prepared to engage with the quiz rather than fiddle (what buttons do I push, how much time will I have, etc) with the quiz format.
Timing: Time is an important theme in the course and comes into play during the quiz, especially for the long answer questions. Because the course is about the interview, and these essay questions are, ostensibly, interview questions. Giving the students a tight time frame will reinforce the importance of the 3 second rule (you should begin your response within 3 seconds) and the 3 minute rule (your answers should be 2 – 3 minutes long, max! with added time for keyboarding skills, or lack thereof). The students should know the answers (content) as they are from their own experience and we will also have practiced these in ‘class’, both (hopefully) in writing and orally. That said, I have given students suggested time frames for answering all of the questions so they have enough time to work through the last two. I am also attempting to emulate condition 2 particularly with respect to the time allotment for and weighting of the essay questions which echoes the time spent and focus on what was practiced in class. The time the quiz will be open has been restricted to 3 days so students don’t have time to ‘over think’ the quiz. Again, this would take away from them being able to practice answering questions ‘under pressure’.
Display: Students will be able to see 1 question per page. While they may jump from page to page to see the other questions, it is a bit of a waste of time and hopefully, they will not be inclined to do so. Given that the answers may be in their notes and in the content of the course and they could look them up if they wanted (especially with the essay questions – and copy and paste might be tempting) but the tight time frame should deter them from trying this. I would have liked to use images instead of text in the answers to the fourth question (multiple choice) on the quiz but that did not appear to be an option within the framework. I believe I could put the images (if I had them) in the question, numbered them and the referred to them in the answers.
Question Types: The only question format I didn’t really like was the short answer format as the only questions I could come up with for this format/type seemed far to ‘rote’ for my taste. Hence, I decided to start the quiz with these questions and chose two points that I have stressed with the students in my f2f teachings and will attempt to do so in this, the online version. I next moved to the multiple choice, matching and finally essay. Though the essay questions are my assessment tool of choice, the opportunity to provide substantive feedback on the multiple choice and questions and overall feedback on the matching the questions (which I will take up later in the feedback section) was very impressive and allowed me the opportunity to, in a sense, blur the lines between assessing and teaching when I chose both the answers and wrote up the feedback. Allowing the students to revise their answers if they do not get full marks on their first choice/submission and after reading (and hopefully processing) the feedback is for me a valuable option and also falls nicely into Gibbs conditions 9 and 10.
Attempts: I have chosen to limit the students to 1 attempt. I have limited it to 1 attempt because I do not want them to spend too much time on being ‘right’ or, for that matter, on revising their short and long answer responses as this takes away from the ‘tight time frame’ which, again, is really what is being stressed. I have also chosen not to go with the adaptive mode. What I am allowing is for the students to change their answers if they do not get them ‘right’ enough. Their scores will be penalized for this, and it will, of course, take time away from more (heavily weighted) important questions so they must make quick decisions as to how to proceed and budget their time.
Grades: I have weighted the long answer responses much more heavily than the short answer, multiple choice and matching questions as a way of stressing that their ability to answer to these questions is of more importance (in a sense, formative over summative). The answers for the essay questions will be graded manually, and will come at a later date. It is a fair bit of work, but a good balance with the site generated grading.
Review Options: All of the review options have been checked. The immediacy of the feedback is definitely inline with condition 6 and it allows the students to redo (albeit, quickly) each question (with a penalty) in search of the best answer.
Security: not necessary. Again, if the students want to cheat, they will. I also believe that adding security may indicate a lack of trust which may end up being a self fulfilling prophecy.
Common module settings: I would have liked to have hidden the test so that the students can only access it through a lesson which is intended to introduce the quiz, its objectives, and structure. Instead, I will delay the start of the test.
Feedback: There are varied spaces for feedback – some ‘suggestive’ or helpful to students when framing their answers to the questions, some to give a ‘pat on the back’ for a good answer, and some that give the opportunity to explain to students why certain answer are ‘better’ than others. I have attempted to take advantage of as many of these as possible in the multiple choice and matching sections and have tried to frame the feedback with conditions 4, 5, and 7 through 10 in mind. I considered linking the feedback to where the answers would have come up during the lessons, but think it best to be ‘present’ with feedback. I also sense that the ‘answers’ to these questions are actually going to come up in the discussions, not the content so the links may not even be available. I am considering going over the test with the students and discuss why some of the answers were ‘better’ than others in a final forum as well as how it felt being pressed for time while trying to make a ‘good impression’ of sorts.
Gibbs & Simpsons 10 conditions:
- Sufficient assessed tasks are provided for students to capture sufficient study time.
- These tasks are engaged with by students, orienting them to allocate appropriate amounts of time and effort to the most important aspects of the course.
- Tackling the assessed task engages students in productive learning activity of an appropriate kind.
- Sufficient feedback is provided, both often enough and in enough detail.
- The feedback focuses on students’ performance, on their learning and on actions under the students’ control, rather than on the students themselves and on their characteristics.
- The feedback is timely in that it is received by students while it still matters to them and in time for them to pay attention to further learning or receive further assistance.
- Feedback is appropriate to the purpose of the assignment and to its criteria for success.
- Feedback is appropriate, in relation to students’ understanding of what they are supposed to be doing
- Feedback is received and attended to
- Feedback is acted upon by the student
Gibbs, G. & Simpson, C (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1 (1), 3-31. Retrieved 8 February 2009 from: http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf