"Willing to be disturbed"…Margaret Wheatley

“We have to be willing to let go of our certainty and expect ourselves to be
confused for a time” ( Wheatley, 2002).

Creating a measurement tool in a Moodle course management system is a somewhat tedious but beneficial technical exercise. It helped me differentiate measurement tools and the assessment process. I now believe when discussing assessment with colleagues, terms are easily confused. Simple put, many equate assessment and the measurement tool aka the test.

The Moodle course management system assignment, creating an online test, is a measurement tool.  It is not, in and of itself “good” assessment.  Certainly, many options exist to create solid assessment for learning activities but like all assessment practices use of the tools not the tools themselves is the difference. This assignment taught me the use of tools. My online test in the Moodle course management system includes Social Studies 11 BC provincial exam questions and therefore is all about the “exam” and not learning.

It took 10 times longer than I anticipated creating the sample quiz in Moodle course management system. I now feel very sorry for Benoit, Trinh, Boris, etc.  because I vastly underestimated, the time required for a newbie.

I was disappointed in the Moodle course management system short answer questions requiring an “exact acceptable answer” spelling, punctuation, and typo errors all produce wrong answers.  Additionally, the matching questions only allow a view of previous selected answers above not below.  I did like the feedback option in the multiple choice as a learning tool to explain the question or response versus just memorizing the correct answer.

Overall, a labour intensive, newbie, learning experience.  It all gets easier with practice…both assessment for learning and Moodle course management system.

“To be curious about how someone else interprets things, we have to be willing to admit that we’re not capable of figuring things out alone” (Wheatley, 2002).

Reference

Wheatley, M.J. (2002). Turning to One Another . Berkeley, Ca: Group West.

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