Reflection on: Making a Moodle Quiz
While the criteria were clearly laid out in our online course, I still managed to confuse myself in this activity. It was easy enough to create a quiz and questions. I am very glad that we were asked to do this assignment because Moodle can be very confusing. It is also very frustrating to spend so long figuring out “technical” issues, like “categories”, when I really just want to finish.
I wish that there was a magic formula to teach me how to figure out a “tech” issue when I am stuck. For example, I have tried to change the mark total of one of my matching questions to “3”. It worked for my other two matching questions, but for some reason, it won’t work for the first one. Like many technical issues, I am glad that I am working on this on Friday night, which leaves me 2 days to try and figure out the problem. Although it is a “made up” quiz, I will run across this issue again, so if I can figure out what I did wrong, it will save me hours of frustration later. The “3” issue is an example of something I cannot find in a Moodle video or FAQ. I am now in the “specific search” stage, which will include asking other teachers if this ever happens to them and coming up with really good google search questions. Based on how many times I have tried to “fix” the problem already, I believe it may be just one of those “bugs” that I am going to have to live with.
The irony of this week’s assignment was that a new attempt at using a new online language course failed this week at work, due to the fact that “anyone” can comment and communicate with all of my learners in China who are in High School. As a result, I had to quickly create an online ESL course in Moodle to “cover” for the students until the problem is resolved. I had left some time today to work on my ETEC 565 project, luckily I had already made the questions, I just needed to upload the the questions into the quiz. So, I ended up creating two courses together and using skills I needed for an assignment, and a real life dilemma. That was pretty exciting and a very good use of my time.
From a educational “assessment” point of view, this quiz is an example of formative assessment. I would be using this kind of quiz in my “online reading comprehension” assessment unit. This “quiz” would be used as one part of a bigger assessment to determine the level of ESL learners coming into Canadian programs. In order not to confuse my professor, I chose to only include the “Reading Comprehension” and part of the “Written” component. The assessment will be described as a unit activity in the final version of the course.
My only concern at this point, other than the mark of “1” instead of “3”, is that I am assuming that our professor is going to get into our course and look at the quiz. We will not have to send a link or something? I guess I should ask that in the course discussion, or see if someone has already asked it.
Otherwise, it was a very worthwhile assignment for me, with the usual level of technical frustration.