I thought I was doing just fine with my Moodle quiz assignment but  ran into a stumbling block tonight with the pre programmed post-exam feedback. I tried a thousand different ways but could not see my feedback show up at the end. I wondered if it is one button somewhere that I can’t see or its simply that I just can’t see the feedback when I attempt the preview. If the latter is true I should have asked for feedback from my peers. Live and learn.

I’m thinking about the letter I in Bates and Pool SECTIONS  framework. I stands for Interactivity which means to consider the the ease of use of technology. Right now Moodle is not my friend so at this late night stage, using their framework I wouldn’t choose Moodle. As for the quiz asignment, I focused on this weeks reading by Gibbs and Simpson (2004). Specifically, condition #9 Feedback is received and attended to. To be an effective teacher I need to continually let students know how they are performing; the more feedback the better for the student. But there has to be a reasonable limit to the amount of feedback given as I can easily become overwhelmed with doing too much. The great opportunity I see, regarding  assessment with technology, is using tools that can provide a lot of effective feedback but don’t load on the work for me. Practice quizzes with multiple attempts allowed, is one such tool. I like Gibbs and Simpson’s suggestion of “providing feedback but no marks, so that students have to read the feedback to get any idea how they are progressing”. By giving a quiz that can be tried multiple times students can ‘practice’ some of the thinking required to master the topic.

This is what I was attempting with my Moodle quiz this week.

Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105).

Conditions Under Which Assessment Supports Students’ Learning 2004 GRAHAM GIBBS1 & CLAIRE SIMPSON2 1 Oxford University, 2 Open University, UK