Reflection
I thoroughly enjoyed this week’s assignment completing a Moodle quiz for my LMS course site. I feel as though this assignment is a motivating one for me to get going on incorporating more “meat” into my course. I guess I can look at it as being designed using the principles of backward design – big ideas first, assessment next and finally the scaffolding of learning activities!
At this point I cannot say that I am 100% happy with how my quiz turned out as I found it very challenging to put my thoughts I had come up with on paper onto Moodle given the assignments constraints. However I will admit that this task presented me with the opportunity to be more open minded about various types of assessments and I recognize that this learning opportunity will continue to make me think more critically about what I assess and how it relates to the goals of the course and effects student learning.
In my face-to-face class, I tend to never use multiple choice, matching and short answer questions as I find it challenging to assess my students thinking when I present them with these types of questions. Therefore like I said above, the task that we were presented with provided me with a number of challenges. It was difficult for me to wrap my brain around how was I going to create and find questions that I could present in this format that would give me meaningful information as to where my students were at. Also, I worried about how this assessment could truly reflect what I value as a teacher of mathematics, seeing my student’s mathematical thinking and problem solving abilities. I was quickly reminded that building assessments is a challenging task!
Moodle Experience
In general I found Moodle itself to be quite user friendly in setting up the quiz. Not having done this before I relied on the provided information embedded in the “question marks”, and various online you-tube tutorials explaining the functionality of each type of possible question. One of the challenges that I ran into while revising my quiz was how to add or delete a question after someone registered in the course had attempted the quiz. It took me a while but I learned through trial and error that I had to clear the attempts before I could go back and edit the quiz. Great learning experience for me before I attempt to use this in my actual class!
Quiz
The quiz that I ended up creating is for the math 9 circle geometry unit. This quiz in particular will be used as a practice quiz for students to gain a clear understanding of where they are at before they write a summative assessment for this unit. Because of this students have the option to take the quiz as many times as they would like without any penalty as it is to be used as a learning tool that provides them with formative feedback. While some of the questions are auto-assessed and given a numerical score, others are based scored on a rubric which focuses on student’s mathematical thinking.
Quiz Features:
- 75 minute time allotment to complete the quiz (ample time for students)
- three auto-assessed matching questions that assess different understanding in this unit (terminology, how to solve a problem, solution to a problem)
- four auto-assessed multiple choice questions with specific and descriptive feedback whether they choose the correct or incorrect response which assess the main concepts of circle geometry
- two auto-assessed short answer questions, both which requires students to apply the circle geometry properties to answer
- two essay questions, which require students to apply and use their understanding of circle geometry to solve the problem that will be marked by me on the provided rubric
- 1 reflection question which students self-assess how they think they did on the quiz before getting the auto-feedback from Moodle (for this reason I have set it as deferred feedback)
Looking Forward
At this point I am beginning to better understand how Moodle can support my face-to-face class. In relation to assessment, I foresee myself using the quiz tools to provide students with immediate formative assessment through multiple choice, matching and short answer questions. I see the discussion a place where students will self-assess their own thinking, provide peer-feedback and receive peer-feedback. In a summative manner Moodle’s essay questions will allow me to collect evidence of students learning in a more conversation type manner. Observations of the discussions will help me more accurately triangulate their understanding. Particular products related to students mathematical problem solving I foresee still being collected in the face-to-face classroom.
In terms of exploring Moodle, as I move forward with creating my LMS course site, I know that I will be incorporating more of the assessment tools into my site. One of my goals will be to explore the other types of questions available and learn how to build rubrics directly into Moodle. In addition I will begin exploring the grade book that Moodle provides to see if it can be of value to me in my course.