Boris is a Chemistry teacher who finds a gap in some students’ performance in laboratory exercises and their exams, in particular around Periodic Table knowledge. Boris’ problem is not unique. In my experience there are many students with disconnections between what they can do in an activity or a lab and what they are able to do on an exam. This may be a fault of the examination system we use, or it may be that the students do not self-prepare properly for the test. More than likely it is a combination of the two, with students not revising their knowledge properly and the test not reflecting the learning conditions under which student’s knowledge is constructed.

Boris uses Moodle as a repository for notes, class documents and for answering student questions outside of class. I think it would be easy for Boris to create a set of quizzes in Moodle to help student identify their knowledge gaps and to become familiar with test questions. As Moodle’s quiz function includes instant marking and immediate feedback, it would be an excellent tool for students to use as for formative assessment. Using active learning and giving prompt feedback (Chickering & Gamson, 1987) promote learning. Gibbs & Simpson (2005, pp. 11-12) point out formative assessment is valuable in:

•  Reactivating or consolidating prerequisite skills or knowledge prior to introducing the new material
• Focusing attention on important aspects of the subject
• Encouraging active learning strategies
• Giving students opportunities to practice skills and consolidate learning
• Providing knowledge of results and corrective feedback
• Helping students to monitor their own progress and develop skills of self-evaluation
• Helping students to feel a sense of accomplishment.

In Moodle, the quiz has the affordance to do all the above, and can also have the questions in a similar form to the written exam’s questions. The questions included on the quiz would need to be set up to cover the important aspects of the unit (2^nd point), would have to give immediate feedback on each question (5^th and 6^th points), and allow retries (3^rd and last points). Supplying the quiz and populating it with authentic questions meets the 1^st and 4^th points.

As formative assessment, a pre-test quizz would not need to be included in an overall course mark, but Gibbs & Simpson (2005) point out students prioritize their time, spending little to no quality time on tasks which do not affect their overall mark in some manner. While in a high school environment, a teacher can cajole and disciple students who are not actively participating in class, if the main idea is for students to use quizzes on their own time, then there will be no teacher present to cajole them, and little recourse/discipline available other than the student’s poor performance on an test. As such I would recommend the quiz results be part of the course final mark, but a reduced amount, perhaps 10-15%, of the overall mark. Additionally, since Moodle allows multiple attempts on quizzes, I would recommend Boris allow student to retry the quiz as many times as they would like to, such that every student could receive 100% on the quiz.

maurice
October 2012

Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987).  Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.  American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), 3-7. Retrieved from wwwtemp.lonestar.edu/multimedia/SevenPrinciples.pdf

Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2005).  “Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning.” Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(2004-05),3-31. Retrieved from www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf

I posted my proposal the other day, thinking it could be better, but knowing time and space conspired against me to make it better. I started with too big a task, the creation of my own rubric, which quickly made me realize why we were asked to create rubrics in groups. Taking on too much at once, and considering deadlines and space limitations, can be frustrating and stressful. The adage that graduate students complain about maximum limits while undergraduates complain about minimum limits is not disproven in this experience.

One of the challenges I face is the present practice in my organization of using Google Sites as an on-line learning platform, and so my proposal needed not to simply espouse the benefits of such a system, but to illustrate the differences between what we are doing now, and Moodle. To me the advantages are obvious, but to others they are not. Where I see a benefit, others see a barrier. Where I see short staff training sessions, others see impossibilities. Knowing this, my proposal started out too large, slightly off focus, and missing items in the criteria such as budget needs.  Thinking of Chickering & Gamson’s (1987) first principles, Encourages contacts between students and faculty, helped me to see how Students and Teaching and Learning in SECTIONS (Bates & Poole, 2003) are not well served by a Content Management System, which, I would argue,  Google Sites are; rather ,students require a Learning Management System to afford and encourage interactivity, not just between themselves and the content, but between themselves and the instructor and between each other. As such, my proposal ended up focusing on the benefits to students, teachers and learning that an LMS like Moodle afford, such as chats, discussion forums as well as the security and privacy concerns with Google.

Maurice
October 2012

Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987).  Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.  American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), 3-7.
http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm

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). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.