Assignment #4 – Assessment
Moodle Quiz: http://moodle.met.ubc.ca/mod/quiz/view.php?id=22082
My goal for this assignment was to create a form of assessment that does not simply test factual knowledge, but evaluates students’ actual comprehension of the course material. In a learning centre students are enrolled at various times into different courses, which means that students are never at the same point in a course or even the same course. Not having a traditional classroom atmosphere presents the challenge of having students learn almost entirely from the course material. By using Moodle quizzes, I feel I am giving students immediate feedback that they can use to challenge their understanding of the subject. This type of formative assessment helps me to better understand the strengths and needs of my students and guides my planning for the term. Although I use Moodle quizzes extensively in my courses, I am not completely satisfied with their overall results. For this assignment, I wanted to rethink my approach for using these quizzes as a more effective and informative tool in the classroom.
I believe that the purpose of these quizzes is to create a formative type of assessment that uses feedback and hints to allow the students to learn in the process of taking the quiz itself. My original model, which I used in my courses, was to have the questions randomly displayed and the students could select “check” to see the correct answer. It did not allow them to change the answer unless they choose to redo the entire quiz to receive a higher mark. Unfortunately, I found the students were not self-motivated enough to redo the quiz for a higher mark and the wide majority of students did not redo the test. As a result, through this assessment, the students never proved that they learned and understood the correct answer.
For this assignment, I was looking at either the immediate feedback with CBM (comparative-based marking) option or the interactive mode with multiple tries. I liked the idea of CBM as it discouraged against guessing but in the end I decided to use the interactive mode with multiple tries. I chose this method because I wanted students to be able to actively construct and re-evaluate their understanding of the course material while they are taking the test. Having the ability to reflect on their comprehension of the subject matter encourages students to become active learners and critical thinkers. To prevent guessing, on the part of the students, I needed to introduce a penalty for each wrong answer. I did not like Moodle’s method for penalties, which used a percentage to reduce the mark. I prefer to be able to say the exact number of marks that students would lose for each incorrect answer. For some questions the penalty was not high enough to discourage guessing and therefore I had to change the penalty percentage amount for each question individually. I titled my quiz as a review because I did not want students to feel the anxiety associated with tests.
My favourite types of Moodle questions are multiple-choice and matching because they allow for immediate feedback, so students can accurately assess their knowledge level of the subject base. I feel that short answer questions are not as effective as they penalize students for spelling errors, which does not accurately demonstrate the students’ comprehension of the subject matter.
Overall, this was a useful assignment and as it allowed me to rethink my rationale for using Moodle “quizzes.” With continued practice and reflection I will be able to use this technique effectively in a classroom.