Assessment
A Reflection on the fundamentals of assessment and of creating a quiz in Moodle
Assessment is a critical component of education; however it is sometimes easy to forget how important assessment is in our students’ success and how important it is to be as transparent as possible about assessments with students. In this course, ETEC 565, there are three key readings that discuss assessment; in the context of online learning (Anderson, 2008), in the context of students’ learning (Gibbs and Simpson, 2005) and in the context of good practice in undergraduate education (Chickering and Gamson, 1987).
There are several common threads about assessment amongst these authors including communication, feedback and engagement. Gibbs and Simpson (2005) emphasize the many reasons and advantages of providing feedback through assessment suggesting that it should be sufficient, focused, timely, and appropriate and that the feedback should be presented in a way that students receive and act upon it. Anderson (2008) emphasizes how communication, engagement and assessment can be enhanced using technology. He specifically mentions the importance of timely and detailed feedback. One of Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) seven principles is prompt feedback, this principle in combination with others such as engagement, cooperation and communication together can create an environment for successful educational practices.
In my flight path, I identified four goals that I would like to achieve in this course. I have come a long way in achieving two of these goals in completing this assessment assignment: affordances and approaches of learning management systems and interactivity and assessment methods. I indicated that I have a lot to learn about assessment and this assignment has given me the foundation through the three key readings mentioned above and hands-on practice through creating an assessment in Moodle. Going from theory to practice however is not always easy.
Prior to taking this course, I had tinkered with adding some of the “resources” in a Moodle website but I had not added any “activities”. As part of this course I have setup the following activities: chat, forum, quiz, survey and Wiki. Setting up the quiz was by far the most challenging. On-line videos from Teacher Training and 2-minute Moodles were very helpful, although not all are for Moodle 2.0.
The Moodle quiz activity does have a lot of features and options to become familiar with, including a question bank. One can either create questions directly in a quiz or create them in the question bank and add selected questions to the quiz. I did the question bank route. This could be very useful for a full course development where a richly populated question bank could be created to serve several versions of the same exam or to create small self-assessment quizzes to provide frequent feedback throughout a course to students.
I found the question data entry to be labour intensive, however it did force me to explore many of the features in creating each question type and in the quiz setup in general. As Moodle does support Respondus, I would use this package in the future to either transfer questions from one LMS to another or to create quizzes and question banks from scratch.
From the readings for this module it is apparent that feedback is very important to students. The Moodle quiz feature does have plenty of opportunity to provide feedback to the students for each question and after completing a quiz. Feedback dependent on how the student answered each question is useful: if they get it correct then reinforce their learning, if they got it wrong then indicate why or give a hint as to how they could have got it correct. Moodle also gives the option to provide the correct answer after the quiz is submitted so students can self-diagnose where they went wrong or reinforce their learning if they got it correct. Finally, Moodle gives the option to provide general feedback to each question regardless of the answer: this can provide an opportunity to give knowledge about the question, link to further information or give the students some information why the topic the question is testing is important.
The overall quiz feedback feature provides the opportunity to include feedback based on the range of the students’ scores. This could be used to reinforce excellence for high scores or to communicate high expectations, one of Chickering and Gamsons principles, to students with lower scores.
Overall, I now have a demonstrated understanding of why assessment is important and not just for grading or ranking a student but for other important reasons such as motivating students, providing feedback, and providing an environment for students and instructors to diagnose student’s strengths and weaknesses. As I move forward advising Academic Chairs and Instructors, I now have some new knowledge about assessments that I can bring to their attention to help support their roles as teachers and advisors. The three papers discussed above are all important in regards to assessment, and the paper by Gibbs and Simpson is certainly one that I will bookmark and will send the link to anyone who is interested in learning about the role and importance of assessment.
Here is the link to my Moodle Quiz.
References:
Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an Online Learning Context. In: Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Athabasca University. Accessed online 3 March 2009 http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf
Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), 3-7. Accessed online 11 Mar 2009 http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm
Gibbs, G. & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Accessed online 11 March 2009. http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf
E-portfolio Assignment #4: Assessment tools
- A complete exam or quiz for your LMS course site, reflecting a variety of question types and assessment strategies, with
10 (or more) questions. You will be assessed based on creating:
- 3 (or more) multiple choice questions
- 3 (or more) matching questions
- 2 (or more) short answer questions
- 2 (or more) short essay questions
- One question with an embedded image or graphic
- Partially or wholly auto-assessed/graded
- Time limited
- Pre-programmed post-exam feedback for students
- A reflection upon your experience completing this assignment posted in the Assessment page of your e-portfolio