CEL490/590: Assessment & Evaluation Online - Unit 2: Traditional Assessments
Please post your lessons learned about traditional assessments: Include what tool you were using, what type of course you teach, what worked, what didn't, and what you'd do differently. :) And feel free to include any other pertinent information, links, resources, etc.
Rafael Espinoza
First, I have to start saying that all my life have been immerse in traditional assessment since I was born. From this previous knowledge I have learned to see how traditional assessment is linked to some negative connotation.
I used traditional assessment only when I was an elementary school teacher in San Jose, Costa Rica. After I began to work at the university level in my classroom, we did presentations, simulations, projects, open quizzes, seminars, quick writes, debates and portfolios. According to the study in this class, I have been developing more a type of alternative assessment in my university classroom than traditional assessment.
What most people think of “testing” is just one the many techniques that we may use to keep track of what student are learning. In this unit, I have learned a different value of the traditional assessment. This value is related of how I may use traditional assessment from a different prospective to find out previous knowledge that students have, conceptual change over time, surveys about how the class is being delivered and so many other applications in the online classroom.
Using the WEBCT tool for quizzes has been a very important learning experience. I never have used tools like those. As curriculum designer I believe that it is important to feel how is to prepare traditional assessment and unpack also all the believes that I have with traditional assessment.
The challenge that I found in this unit is to develop quizzes in English. The content is so different in Spanish than in English. The most important lesson has been to develop framework for doing traditional assessment in through LMS. I still have long road to learn.
My final understanding of ‘Assessment” is a process of gathering, describing, or quantifying information about performance. The purpose of student assessment is to support learning and teaching by identifying students’ academic strengths and weaknesses. Besides, this process allows me to make informed decisions about the teaching learning process by provision of supplemental intervention and support to the students. Here is where I think that no matter what type of assessment we have to think about what is the purpose of evaluation.
If the traditional assessment is created just for failing students that situation is very different. Or the traditional assessments is done just for recall/recognition and develop memorization of facts, it is also different too. The traditional assessment must look for developing competences and critical thinking skills on the learners.
The following are some interesting links that help me to learn more about this topic:
Quizzing and Testing Tools
Designing online learning assessment. This article tackles the concerns assessment is facing in online learning and considers the limitations of the classic assessment models should be overcome by a new paradigm for assessment design in online learning.
Please post your lessons learned about traditional assessments: Include what tool you were using, what type of course you teach, what worked, what didn't, and what you'd do differently. :) And feel free to include any other pertinent information, links, resources, etc.
Learning how to create a traditional assessment, and discussing the limitless issues on the class discussion board has been an enlightening experience for me. I have created a quiz in Moodle and in Edu2.0, and intend to use the WebCT quiz tool as well, to post a quiz for my freshmen advisees. Learning the quiz tools for CEL 580 goes along with creating assessments in CEL 590, and I am integrating the lessons.
The built-in quiz tools are great. I really appreciate the technology that allows for the online delivery. They seem to be similar in Moodle and Edu2.0. I assume WebCt will be similar as well.
I found myself re-writing quiz questions several times sometimes, as I looked at them from the viewpoints presented, such as making sure every question examines only the important knowledge, and offering answers to multiple choice questions that were unified, clear and realistic.
The purpose of the quiz I created is for use as an open book quiz. Questions are clustered in categories that can be found in the NMSU catalog, and the purpose of the quiz is to get students to browse each section/category to learn where to find certain information and to learn that certain information can be found there. In finding answers to the quiz, students will need to become somewhat familiar with the catalog. I don’t want them to memorize it, just be able to use it effectively as a reference. Therefore, traditional type quiz is appropriate, as, I assume, alternative assessment will be. Traditional assessment of a learner's useful knowledge of the catalog achieves the goal of assessing a student's ability to disseminate accurate and factual information from the catalog.
Judy Harmon
I am beginning to feel more comfortable using the tools in Web/CT and navigating the system. I created a test using the Quiz/Survey tool following Bethany's tutorial. My quiz was a 10-question quiz with T/F; Multiple Choice, Short Answer, and Essay questions. I posted in one of my online courses and offered extra credit for those who took it. I also figured out how to receive email notification that the quiz was taken. I received the email with the student's email (so I could give credit) with correct/incorrect responses. Since the Mac does not support Respondus, this is a helpful tool and most user friendly. I also accessed the Penn State website (tlt.psu.edu/suggestions/questionwriting) for support information on how to compose test questions. The article separates the different types of questions and provides samples and explanations. There is more to creating effective questions it than I thought.
I just completed the basics. I would need to view another tutorial to determine how to complete the equations and how to grade essay questions. If you are interested in accessing the articles, check out: http://tlt.psu.edu/suggestions/questionwriting/rules.shtml -- actually, this cold have been a Bethany recommendation.
Olive Oil
I wish this unit correlated more with CEL 580 as I just learned the quiz tool for WebCT for Unit 1 in that class. I really didn’t learn so much with the quiz tool (would have loved to have had Bethany’s quiz tool tutorial) since I just learned the tool. However, I did get exposure to some great material on making quizzes from the discussions. I feel that instructors should use a variety of assessments to evaluate their student comprehension to allow for equal opportunity and display of students strengths and learning needs. I highly encourage project-based learning for assessment as it gives the student a role into their own assessment of their knowledge and discourages cheating.
Angie Wolf
In my face to face classes I do frequent traditional assessments, to help both the learner and me – the instructor – to gauge mastery of course material by my students. I think I already used a variety of question types. Nevertheless I found a few new ones like the assertion-reason questions. Those will be challenging to my students, because they not only require to judge if a statement is correct, but also if this statement is a correct reason or explanation of the assertion statement. This question type is a good alternative to the more usual “explain” your reasoning, gives quite some insight in the understanding of the student if constructed properly - and a lot faster to grade.
I also got some more ideas on how to use matching questions in my content area.
When facing the challenge of getting all those question ideas into WebCT, I realized that the first hurdle was to convert my material into appropriate formats. Since many of my questions contained drawings done in Word I had to find a way of saving those drawings individual in some image format. I found the easiest way is to save the entire Word document as html file. Word then automatically converts any drawings or equation objects in gif files and collects them in a separate folder. I did rename the files I needed to something meaningful to me, send them to a zipped folder, uploaded that folder into WebCT and extracted the files. I also learned that you can save a copy of an equation object created with MathType as gif file.
I found the quiz tool in WebCT inconvenient: Especially the calculated answer questions have a very rigid format. For example, if you require a number with units you have to be specific about with how many significant figures the result needs to be entered; if a student enters a correct result in any other number format it is counted wrong. There is also the option to ask for units with the answer, but this makes little sense, because as correct answer you can only specify one number and one unit. A calculated answer of e.g. 550 nm or 5.50e-7 m would both be correct, but WebCT allows only one of these combinations to be entered as correct result. I did explore the option of varying the numerical parameters for students, so they answers are not identical. This helps a bit with cheating. The equation editor works to display equations, but this feature is not integrated with randomized quantities in the calculated question type. It is a lot easier to write the equation in another equation editor, export them as images and include those in the question text if necessary.
I also experimented with the feedback option in the quiz tool. I was able to give feedback as text and equation images. The entry box is very tiny in WebCT and it is hard to write code into it. It is probably easier to write an html file somewhere else, then copy and paste it into that text box.
Overall I learned that HTML 4 supports a lot of special characters like Greek letters, arrows and math operators. They can be found using Google and searching for “HTML special charcters”. Below are two sources:
Special Characters and Symbols in HTML
URL:http://www.avenue-it.com/html/extracharacters.html
Entities for Symbols and Greek Letters
URL: http://htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/entities/symbols.html
Hymenoxys
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Traditional assessment questions are a lot more work then I anticipated and there was a lot more thought that needed to go into them. I definitely learned a lot from the readings and developing the questions. I know that I have a lot of learning to go and a lot more work on my questions. I am using the EDU as my LCMS tool and will be creating some quizzes specifically to the unit they are learning. Traditional assessment will work the best for me because I can observe if the learner is recalling the information. As far as doing something different I need to work on my questions, developing more effective objectives and more of them. I am enjoying working out of my comfort zone and becoming an effective educator.
Conni DeBlieck
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I learned how to create quizzes in webct, and it was tough. I have used webct for years both as a student and as a instructor however I have never used the quiz tool. I found it very time consuming, however after some time and patience I finally got it. After doing some reading and research on the different types of assessments, I realized that I use traditional as well as authentic assessment in my classroom. I chose to use a quiz that I give my students and after reading some of the comments Bethany gave me, I need to do some additional work on a few of the questions as well as work on my objectives.
Kellie
I created a short quiz in webct for the course I am building as part of the cohort assignment. I have used traditional assessments before but I kept them very simple in that I used only T/F and Multiple Choice (guess). This time I added a matching question with 5 items and also attempted a short answer question. I have always heard that to use the short answer option is scary in that the student can misspell a word and miss the question. I limited the short answer to only 3 words and I hope it works. It does take time to create the questions so that they do challenge the student and aren't just 'give me' points. I am looking forward to getting feedback on my questions.
Jackie
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I have been using the WebCT quiz/survey tool for some time. I have used it to assess student learning, gain feedback on design components, and to receive input from students on particular items in the course. I have used short answer, paragraph, matching, multiple choice, and true false. Last semester I finally started adding images - it seemed to add a whole new dimension to testing. It is in the testing tool in WebCT that I wish we were using Blackboard Vista. It seems easier to use and for some reason I take great pleasure and comfort in knowing that in Vista you can create learning objectives/goals and link them to assessments, assignments, discussions, etc. I find that useful for myself because it reminds me to rethink WHY AM I HAVING STUDENTS DO THIS? The course I am teaching this spring is an introduction course, so my assessment measurements are primarily online quizzes/pre-tests, but also use group projets and the discussion to test their knowledge. In my upper division courses, the assessments are often times projects that the students work on throughout the semester. I think since I have the technological portion down, I really need to start working on what it is that I need to be testing, how often, when, and with what form of assessment. I want to be sure students are learning the information, are going to be able to take the information beyond the course, and are not plagued with busy work.
Michelle
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As a student I did not realize how much goes into developing a quiz/exam. There is much to consider. How to write questions, how to use distracters and the various type of assessments are all part of the process. At some point one needs to stop researching and begin writing the questions. The ability to compose questions in a manner that students atually learn comes with experience and requires creativity. Currently, I am not teaching. I am developing a course for the final practicum in this cohort. I use to think quizzes/exams were only to determine how well the students learned, after all the instructor is knowledgeable on the topic (usually). Now, I see how they are also used to discern how well an instructor is teaching. It is a good feedback tool to evaluate how the instructor is meeting the objectives as well as evaluating students. I found the quiz tool on WebCT user friendly, especially after Bethany's tutorial. It has so many options from changing the background to timing every question to grading options. This technology sure makes it easier once you learn how to use it.
The Leatherlady
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Well, I've been at this a while, so the incremental improvement in the last few weeks is not great. So, I'll just add a couple of things not mentioned above.
- While HTML supports a lot of special characters, not all browsers support the full set. To check this, I have a html table of the characters I use and I just open it in a browser to see what it supports. So far, FIreFox seems to support the most and IE the least. :-/
- The MS font Arial rounded BT bold looks really nice, but not all Windows machines have it and if someone opens a document containing that font, they can end up with a bunch of weird symbols. So, I don't use it any more for documents I distribute.
- For some things, the WebCT survey tool is great, but for others, Acrobat forms are much better. I have one form in which students enter over 100 bits of information, usually in less than a few minutes. I don't even want to consider how that would fly using WebCT survey tool. However, for small surveys, the WebCT tool is still faster and easier to use.
- Everybody has their own definition of "traditional" assessment.
- The WebCT survey / quiz interface is a bit flakier. It used to be that when a student started a quiz, it popped up on top. Now, I get reports that the quiz window opens behind the launching window. For a while we though nothing was happening, until we figured it out.
- For those having trouble with automatic grading in WebCT, I don't rely on it. In fact, WebCT doesn't know how to grade one kind of question I use properly. What I do is always have a paragraph-type question as the last question in each quiz. I set the option that students cannot see their grade until their quiz is graded and the availability period is over. Until I grade that last question, they will not see their grade or comments. This gives me a chance to check WebCT's grading before the student sees the grade and feedback.
- Having the last question a paragraph type allows me to add comments, too.
- For calculated questions, I always specify the units and precision, e.g., calculate the expectation to three decimal places." If the student specifies a different unit than I expect, I can check the answer manually and override WebCT. Also, if you do not specify units, the units box will not show up.
- It is a very good idea to get a phony student username, if you do not have one already, and try the quiz from a student's perspective. Things may not work as you think they do.
Bye for now,
John
I had a really difficult time with this assignment. Not only am I challenged by writing objectives, I am also challenged by writing traditional assessments. I thought I was better at it but I realized during this unit that I don't use multiple choice or short answer questions as much, I use papers and case studies which I now know to be non-traditional for assessment. As far as getting the quiz into Moodle, that was fairly intuitive after using the Help documents easily available within Moodle. I have really learned a great deal from the discussions on traditional assessment during this unit. Several ideas that I plan to incorporate are:
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Using multiple choice questions but asking students to justify why each answer is right or wrong.
- Rethinking the use of multiple multiples as a way to improve and demonstrate problem solving in an uncertain environment
- Having students create questions and using them as test questions
I am using Moodle as my LMS and I like their quiz tool so much better than WebCT. My experience with using the quiz tool in WebCT made it easier for me to understand how to format the questions and answers and what options to choose. Since Moodle gives you an option to preview your quiz, you can see before posting it what problems may arise - and I had some so had to correct them. Also Moodle allows you a student view without logging in as a student (like you do in WebCT).
As always, I am extremely impressed with the knowledge and expertise of my colleagues in the course. I learn so much from their experiences and really value the input. I need to be more diligent in sharing my experiences but believe I am a novice in this arena.
Wanda
I have created traditional and alternative test questions in a number of my courses. Creating traditional test questions is a relatively difficult task. There needs to be a clear and unambiguous question, a correct answer, 3-4 distracters which appear plausible to students without the ability to recognize a correct answer, and coherence to the content matter to be examined. However, the effort expended in constructing traditional questions is rewarded by the ease and reliability of grading.
I created my questions under Moodle. It took a little time to play around with it, being a new feature for me. I plan to spend more time working through this module to be proficient at it. One of the benefits I like in this module is a pool of quiz questions (traditional) that can be chosen manually or at random and immediate feedback to students.
cj
Quizzes are new to me as an instructor. I usually use quizzes just for attendance, like when half the class is gone. So I'm faced with double trouble, learning not only how to use the quiz tool but also how to write a question. I have played with the quiz tool a bit. Is there a way to down load quiz questions?
Beth
I am using Moodle to develop my course. The quiz tool, as described in the documentation, is versatile and straightforward. That is the case in practice, but it consumes a bunch of time. Fortunately the nature of the LMS is that it’s only necessary to build the q-bank once! I thought I was pretty good at constructing questions, but the real key is to align the questions to the goals for the lesson/course.
One of my continual feedback observations to professors is that their tests seem more intended to find out if students have read the text/handouts, taken good lecture notes, and can regurgitate selected material under time constraints than to assess what actual “learning” (and by extension – teaching) has occurred. Traditional assessments are not easily-designed for that type of inquiry.
So… I spent much time (a) writing and rewriting questions and (b) entering the questions I selected into Moodle’s quiz tool. The entering time was extended because I was not satisfied with a simple “correct” or “incorrect” response – I also constructed feedback for each possible response to the question. I also developed many more questions (and I have still more to do) than will appear on any one iteration of the quiz. My intent is to have a large question pool of which only part will be displayed for any particular “quiz-taker.” I have not succeeded in making this work (yet) the way I envision. Additionally I intend that a Learner may elect to give a 2nd and/or 3rd response to an erroneous answer for a reduced point value. This option works wonderfully in the Moodle quiz tool. My intent is for Learners to Learn regardless of the points earned!
FranR
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