Assessment
My Experience with Moodle Quiz
Since I have never used Moodle before, I had to spend some time getting familiar with the program and its functionality. I found it really easy to navigate and I really liked the fact that the buttons tell you what the functionality is when you hover over them, similar to MS Office.
The flexibility in question types in Moodle surprised me. The diversity in questions could help me structure a quiz to meet the Ministry’s guidelines to assess in the following categories: Knowledge, Thinking, Communication and Application. For example, I could select multiple choice or matching questions if I wanted to assess knowledge, and short answer or essay questions if I were interested in assessing application of concepts. In addition, the choice in question types would allow me to structure assessments that would “provide very high quantity and quality of assessment, while maintaining student interest and commitment” (Anderson, 2008, p. 51).
I liked Moodle’s use of icons to differentiate question types. This helped me locate questions I wanted to edit more easily. Also, I now appreciate the importance of naming questions in as detailed a manner as possible. Originally, I wasn’t as detailed as I should have been in naming questions and I ended up spending a bit of time trying to locate a particular question that I wanted to edit. While it takes some time to create questions and store them in the question bank, I can see the benefits of having a bank of questions from which to draw either for formative or summative assessment.
The ability to provide feedback to students at different points in the quiz was helpful. I also appreciated the fact that I could provide my own feedback for each question or for the quiz overall. The ability to provide feedback is especially useful for formative assessments when students need to know what areas need more work. In fact, formative assessment should provide feedback to “give each student guidance on how to improve” (Black & Wiliam, 2001, p. 8). In addition, having the flexibility to allow multiple attempts at a (formative) quiz would allow students to gauge their understanding of a particular topic, similar to what I have done by taking our course’s HTML quiz a couple of times.
References
Anderson, T. (2008). Towards a Theory of Online Learning. In: T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Accessed online 1 June 2011 http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008_Anderson-Online_Learning.pdf
Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (2001). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Retrieved from http:// weaeducation.typepad.co.uk/files/blackbox-1.pdf