It must be some perversion on my part, but I’m actually enjoying playing with Moodle. I don’t think I’d even heard of it before this class so I guess that puts me deeply into the beginner category. So far I haven’t found using it too frustrating, and I didn’t find developing the quiz too frustrating either, which has to be a good sign. I just wish it wasn’t for marks. Of course, if it wasn’t a requirement for a class I probably wouldn’t be doing it.
Personal experience developing the quiz. As I said, I didn’t find it that difficult to use Moodle to develop the quiz. I think everything is findable within the program, if you are willing to spend the time experimenting with the various editing tools. As for the experience of actually making up the quiz, I was surprised how difficult it was to come up with three matching questions. I found them really hard to write!
Pluses and minuses. I find myself going back and forth with my opinion of some of the elements of the quiz feature. I wasn’t sure about having the timing always visible. I know it’s optional and I’m not sure if I would use it in a real situation. On one hand it’s great for students to be able to keep track of the time they have to write the quiz. On the other hand I wonder if being constantly aware of the minutes ticking by might not be distracting or even create a psychological weight. I guess ideally it would be better if the student could control the timer but I didn’t see any way of doing that.
I also wasn’t sure about the feature that shows instantly whether the question was answered correctly. I think if I was writing the quiz and as soon as I answered the first question something popped up to say the answer was wrong I might feel a bit panicked. I think that would have a very negative effect on me.
Finally, it seems like it would be really easy to cheat with an online quiz. Even if there is a time limit for the quiz a student could have everything at the ready to look up answers. This of course wouldn’t really apply to an essay type of question where a student has to express an opinion, but for a question that has a specific answer I think it would be difficult to stop. Even with an essay question what’s to stop a person phoning a friend and discussing what each of them is going to say. I know that many teachers avoid ‘open book’ quizzes because students spend so much time looking up answers that they do poorly on the quiz, but it’s hard to convince students of that, and if they’re sitting at home you’re probably not going to be successful in convincing them that it’s a bad idea.