I have just completed developing my quiz on Moodle. Despite struggling with the technical aspects of Moodle in general, I am impressed by the capabilities and possibilities in this. And despite making the decision to not complete my assignment based on a course for Gr. 4 students, I can see a great many possibilities in using Moodle assessment for my students. Which leads me to reflect on getting the original course off the ground – I just could not get past creating a course for my students where a substantive amount of their learning on-line, but again, it became clear very quickly that this would be a great tool for diagnostic, formative, and summative assessment. And especially for homework/follow-up that would be fairly easy for my students.
Since my course is for volunteers in a non-profit setting, with the aim being first and foremost: training & education, and secondly for recruitment, the nature of my course and therefore quiz would differ from a strictly academic setting. The main purpose or end, rather, of my quiz, therefore, was not so much the “grade” but the review, feedback, and reinforcement that it would give to the student, as well as thoughtful reflection that would lead directly into a F2F conversation at the final workshop (the culmination of my course). The final short essay (reflection) questions are intended to give the students a chance to articulate their thoughts at their own time and place, knowing that both a written response would be received and conversation would occur as follow-up. I feel that in this course, the most valuable feedback would be through the on-going discussion forums, and in the final F2F meeting. The quiz is intended mostly for review of the basic concepts upon which the discussions would be based. As I would engage in discussion with the students, I would create an assessment profile of each student that would be the basis of their F2F orientation and in the action of their on-going volunteer activities. I think that this is the most valuable aspect of feedback, as referenced in Condition 10 by Gibbs & Simpson “Feedback is acted upon by the student.”.
In general, I have encountered two situations where my real-life situation don’t seem to be an ideal fit for the parameters of this course. First, it was the age-appropriateness of a mostly-online Moodle course for my Gr. 4 students, and then at the assessment stage, the different nature of “grading” than would be expected in a secondary or post-secondary academic setting. Despite my frustration and difficult learning curve in thinking about and using an LMS in my practical situations, I feel that this has been an extremely valuable experience and that I have learned a lot in diving in and trying to use a tool that may or may not suit my purposes fully, and then trying to figure out a way of adapting the tool to improve delivery (e.g. the online volunteer course may encourage many more individuals to get through the course stage of volunteering, and get to the orientation and to volunteering – which is the end goal), or to use the tool in a narrow way that would suit my purposes (e.g. creating a spelling/science quiz).
Reference:
Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf