I have just completed the assessment assignment on my Moodle page. The exam is one that I built and used for students in a digital mapping course at BCIT this summer session and the question bank was originally built in Desire 2 Learn or D2L.
I found Moodle to be far less user friendly and the options for building questions were limited compared to the D2L system. The short answer questions did not allow me to embed the answer within a sentence and so many of the questions had to be rebuilt and reworded to fit the Moodle format. There is an export tool for D2L and Moodle accepts question bank imports from many different LMS systems – but not from D2L. I tried converting the XML file to a text file and still, it did not work. I resorted to copy and paste and realized that if you were relying on one system and then were forced to change (as many of the users on the forums where I looked for answers were facing), there would be no way to easily transfer the questions from D2L to Moodle. This was doable for the 20 or so questions that I created but would have been a nightmare for a hundred questions and many instructors have this many and more in the question banks. A conversion tool is needed!
I had not used an essay question in the past and I like the opportunity to have the students to think and respond in a less restricted or structured answer format. This allows me to have sections of the exam that are summative and sections that are formative where feedback is given to each response and there is an opportunity to interact with students directly. The ‘fact’ or recall questions will be marked for me by the system and this saves me a great deal of time and allows me to focus on the feedback on questions where students submit files or a paragraph response. It also asks students to think about a scenario that is similar to one they will face in their careers.
In a course like digital mapping it would be easy to provide facts and examination cues discussed in the paper by Gibbs and Simpson (2005). In a fact providing and recall assessment environment, students may succeed in the course if they focus only on the ‘cues’ and required information for achieving a high mark but they would not succeed in the field where an understanding of the system and environment as well as an ability to plan and troubleshoot is essential. If students are going to clue into a ‘hidden curriculum’ then I want to include their ability to apply and adapt as part of the information and skill they focus on to succeed in the course.
I find the online exam format easy to use and the auto-marking feature is very helpful and efficient way to recieve assessment results. A review of the attempts allows instructor to modify or change a grade if the marks were incorrectly given due to an error in the question or partially correct answer was given by the student. The time setting and the restriction is also very useful as it allows for the exam to be hidden and unavailable until a set time and the exam completes and closes after a set time.
I talked about the different types of assessment tools that I have worked on and used in the past. One of the discussions talked about using images instead of text. I am not sure if Moodle can do this though I think you upload an image and than ask questions about it as you can in D2L. There are plugins in WordPress and of course, Flash, will allow you to build interactive quizzes with drag and drop, mix and match, video and non-linear paths that result in different outcomes or scenarios. I cannot activate a plugin in this WordPress tool as we are limited with what we can set up but I have provide a link to a bird quiz and to a millwright quiz that was built using flash.
http://evolvemultimedia.ca/portfolio/BirdQuiz/birdquiz.swf
http://evolvemultimedia.ca/portfolio/MillwrightEx/Fire.html
The great thing about both of these tools is that they can be linked in flash to a database and the activities and results tracked for both students and the teacher. Flash can be difficult to use however and it is now mobile friendly though there are now several apps that allow you to access flash with the iDevices.
It is easier to do in WordPress. If anyone is interested in the wordpress options for building quizzes. http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-pro-quiz/ is one that is easy to use and works well.
Here is a more extensive list of quiz plugins!
http://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/quiz
References:
Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2005). “Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning.” Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Accessed online 11 March 2009 http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf