One of the things that I get excited about is Moodle\u2019s ability to host and grade quizzes.\u00a0 \u00a0Readers, you must bear with me:\u00a0 my music history course was hosted on a free website that was NOT designed to function as an LMS.\u00a0 Consequently, I had to spend valuable class time administering these quizzes, and it would be a week (or longer, much longer) before students received feedback.<\/p>\n
Jenkins (2005) point out that assessments are useful learning tools, although they are not necessarily confined to quizzes and essays (Jenkins, p. 69).\u00a0 In fact, he points out that over-reliance on examinations can result in surface learning where students develop strategies for \u201cace-ing\u201d their exams without actually learning (Jenkins, p. 67).<\/p>\n
When used correctly, formative assessments \u201ccarried out during a learning event\u201d (Jenkins, 2005, p. 69) can be most helpful in supporting students as they master materials.\u00a0 Formative exams can be done each week and tend to be narrowly focused on one or two topics.\u00a0 One of the major features of computer-assisted assessments is that they provide immediate feedback to students.\u00a0 Studies show that the immediacy of such feedback is vital if the assessments are to support student learning (Jenkins, 2005, p. 67)<\/p>\n
I have designed a formative quiz for Module 4, Music in the Classical Era.\u00a0 I have narrowed the topics for this particular quiz to just two topics\u2014instrumental music and opera.\u00a0 I have not included sacred vocal music or lieder\/song or any other topic from the era.\u00a0 One of my essay questions, however, requires students to make connections between the era at hand and characteristics from a previous one.<\/p>\n
Setting up a quiz in Moodle is quite intuitive:\u00a0 it\u2019s a matter of filling in the fields accurately.\u00a0 There\u2019s documentation in Moodle docs that\u2019s very helpful especially in filling out the feedback fields.\u00a0 I made the mistake of filling in the general feedback field with \u201cYup, you got it.\u201d\u00a0 When I took the test myself and got the question wrong (okay, I did that on purpose).\u00a0 The computer marked the question as incorrect, but the feedback, \u201cYup, you got it\u201d came up!\u00a0 That was not the correct field to stick that bit of feedback in!<\/p>\n
It takes a bit of time to create the quiz, at least for the novice.\u00a0 I suppose I\u2019ll develop facility as I do it more often.\u00a0\u00a0 Half-way through designing the quiz, I decided to see if it would really work.\u00a0 It did.\u00a0 However, when I went back to finish adding questions, I found that I could not.\u00a0 Once there are attempts I can neither add nor subtract questions.\u00a0 I panicked for a bit, then I thought about creating another quiz with a different name and seeing if I could import the questions I\u2019d already made up.\u00a0 It worked!\u00a0 Paranoia set in, however, and I kept the old quiz.\u00a0 I\u2019m scared of deleting it and deleting the entire bank of questions.<\/p>\n
The short answer and essay questions are a bit different in Moodle that what I envisioned in a face-to-face setting.\u00a0 In music history, short answers are usually defining a term with the who, what, when, why<\/em> format, which usually takes up a paragraph.\u00a0 Essays require 4-6 paragraphs, depending upon the question.\u00a0 In Moodle the \u201cshort answers\u201d are more like \u201cfill-in-the-blank\u201d and the essays are like short answers.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the computer will not grade the essays; maybe that\u2019s the reason why a paragraph-length response is recommended!<\/p>\n One of the things that I never did figure out how to do in the multiple choice questions is to have students chose several answers from a list.\u00a0 For instance if there are four choices for answers, students could pick \u201ca and d\u201d \u201cb and c\u201d etc.\u00a0 I found it helpful that I could program several variations of spellings for correct single answers, and choose the grade that I wanted to give for each.\u00a0 That way if a student wasn\u2019t sure of the spelling of a word, they would still get credit.\u00a0 Moodle has its limitations, though.\u00a0 There may be other variations of spellings that the student would supply which the computer would mark wrong, but I would probably give partial credit for, if I were manually grading.<\/p>\n I liked the opportunity to combine images and sound to my questions, and managed to combine the two for one of the essays.\u00a0 I was disappointed, though, that the limitation in disc space on the server prevented me from uploading sound files directly to my site.\u00a0 That will limit the types of online quizzes that I can design.\u00a0 For instance I cannot create a quiz where I ask students to name the composition, composer and era in which it was written.\u00a0 If I provide links to the music on youtube, students would be able to find the answers with very little digging.\u00a0 If I used sound files, however, there would be nothing available to give away the answers.<\/p>\n This self-assessment opportunity is very helpful for students.\u00a0 It will help prepare students for the constructivist learning that my course requires (Gibbs and Simpson,\u00a0 2005, p. \u00a08).\u00a0 \u00a0This assessment and others will also allow students to \u201cmonitor their own progress as and when they wish\u201d (Jenkins, p. 76).<\/p>\n References:<\/p>\n Gibbs,G. & Simpson, C. (2005).\u00a0 Conditions under which assessment supports students\u2019 learning.\u00a0 Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1<\/em>(1),\u00a0 3-31.\u00a0 Retrieved from Jenkins, M.\u00a0 (2005).\u00a0 Unfulfilled promise:\u00a0 Formative assessment using computer-aided assessment.\u00a0 Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1<\/em>(1), 67-80.\u00a0 Retrieved from http:\/\/www2.glos.ac.uk\/offload\/tli\/lets\/lathe\/issue1\/articles\/jenkins.pdf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the things that I get excited about is Moodle\u2019s ability to host and grade quizzes.\u00a0 \u00a0Readers, you must bear with me:\u00a0 my music history course was hosted on a free website that was NOT designed to function as an LMS.\u00a0 Consequently, I had to spend valuable class time administering these quizzes, and it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7335,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-14","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/davidson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/davidson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/davidson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/davidson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7335"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/davidson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/davidson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/davidson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14\/revisions\/59"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/davidson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nhttp:\/\/ www2.glos.ac.uk\/offload\/tli\/lets\/lathe\/issue1\/articles\/simpson.pdf<\/p>\n