Assessment Tools
My assessment tools included a forum activity, the creation of a class wiki and a quiz. All of which were created in Moodle. The following discussion focuses on formative and summative assessments from a Moodle quiz.
The Process
In creating my assessment I went through a number of stages while asking myself some key questions:
1. Review Course objectives – I looked at the overall objectives of the course and how I could fashion not only lessons but my assessment to reflect overall objectives.
2. Assess Content and skills – What did I want my students to learn and/or be able to do?
3. Determine the Experience – What kind of experience did I want my students to have?
I wanted my students to have a practical hands on experience while having knowledge of scientific research and evidence that could inform their, design and application. A quiz comprising different types of questions; multiple choice, matching, short answer and essays was created in Moodle. Creating the quiz in Moodle allowed for the creation of computer aided instruction in that students are able to get feedback immediately after completing the quiz. This is valuable in the experience I would like to offer my students of timely feedback. Research shows that feedback is most effective when it is received right after an activity is completed (Gibbs & Simpson, 2005).
The feedback feature made me really concentrate on developing high quality feedback given the asynchronous nature and the inability to expand on points or clear up misunderstandings. This activity also proved time consuming for the very same reason aforementioned. However, the potential benefits (not having to grade papers and students receiving immediate feedback) outweigh this difficulties in this initial effort.
The Moodle structure also enabled both formative and summative assessments. I was able to set the time in which I wanted the students to complete the quiz and to signify how many attempts at each question they were allowed, while being able to award penalties for later trials. This was important as students could perhaps guess their way through some questions and as such information for summative and formative assessments would be skewed.
I had to employ other skills such as HTML coding to insert graphics in my questions. However, this was achieved simply enough.
Challenges
I had two main problems with difficulties with the Moodle quiz experience:
1. The assignment of values for marks to questions were not conducive to awarding higher marks to questions that require higher order thinking skills (Bloom’s Taxonomy)
2. I am not necessarily able to track students’ areas of misconception (or wrong answers). This is crucial if the true purpose of formative assessment is to be realised. Black and Wiliam (1998b) define assessment broadly from both a teacher and student perspective to encompass activities that are given/completed in order to gather information on content comprehension, teaching strategies and needs for alterations (whether to content or methods) (www.vtaide.com).
Conclusion
Overall it was a satisfying experience but I would have to supplement the activity in order to gather information on how students were thinking and also on assigning a grading scheme that caters to higher marks for higher order activities (Bloom’s Taxonomy).
References
Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2005). “Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning.” Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Accessed online 28 June 2011 http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf
http://www.vtaide.com/png/ERIC/Formative-Assessment.htm , retrieved, July 2, 2011