Assessment
Rationale – Assessment Tool Assignment
The purpose for the online course is to provide an overview of the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA), our club South Central Ontario (SCO) and the products our organization offers. This exam is supportive of my goals of this course in that it allows for the workplace trainers and CAA SCO management to gauge learners retention and application of information. The exam contains 15 questions, which are comprised of 5 multiple choice, 4 matching, 4 short answers and 2 short essay questions. Each of the questions focuses on key concept, terminology or information that can be found within the 7 modules. This variety of questions types within the exam allows for learners to recall and apply course material in a number of ways. This exam is a form of summative assessment, which evaluates or measures an employee’s final performance. Individual results can then be compared to the overall employee grade. The scoring on particular questions can also provide the workplace trainer with valuable information, for instance if there is a question that is repeatedly receiving a high number of incorrect responses, this may indicate that the section of course covering this topic may lack clarity or requires further elaboration. Such analysis of results, can allow for edits and enhancements to the course and hence employee understanding and learning. As the LMS is new to CAA SCO employees, the successful completion of a course and online exam will mark a milestone. In order to ensure that this online exam is successful, I have paid particular attention to the instructions provided to the employee. By providing detailed instructions, this Moodle tool is also supporting my goal of exposing employees to a LMS and educational technology as well as broadening their learning experience.
I see employees using this tool as a means to measure their level of comprehension of the course material. Upon completion of the exam, it is my hope that employees will read the feedback and take ownership of their learning and go back to the module itself to review the content or seek the assistance of the workplace trainer (or a member of management) if uncertainty still exists.
Moodle allows for one to easily view the number of students, or in my case, employees who have completed the quiz/exam. There is the ablity to drill down to individual results as well as view responses to individual questions. Reports can be exported to excel and distributed to members of Management as needed.
In using Moodle, some concerns or issues associated with the tool include:
– computer access for everyone completing the online exam
– time to populate the test bank (eg: copy & paste from an existing Word Document)
– reliance on server to run exam within the LMS (eg: connectivity issues)
– usage of reference material to complete the exam as no instructor is watching or proctoring the exam
– user apprehension with completing an online exam vs the traditional paper-based exam
– lack of face-to-face feedback if over reliance is placed on automatic feedback
– cheating (Is the employee taking the test?)
– sharing of feedback by employees who already took the online exam with others
On the opposite side of the continuum, some of the positives of the tool, which offset some the concerns and issues I raised above include:
– automatic grading
– immediate feedback
– statistics available (detailed reports)
– environmentally friendly (no paper quizzes/exams).
Cole, J. (2005). Using moodle: Teaching with the popular course management system. Sebastopol: CA. O’Reilly Media Inc.