The Moodle Gradebook as a tool inducing regular revisions
in students' learning process.
Piotr Marek JaworskiEdinburgh Napier University
The Business School
Moodlemoot Edinburgh 2014Tuesday 15th April - Edinburgh Corn Exchange
Principles of Economics Module
• First year undergraduate summer trimester module presenting basic economic concepts of micro-and macroeconomics.
• Consisting of ten units of material involving2h lecture and 1 hour tutorial
• Addressed to all Business School students, who would like to gain elementary economic knowledge.
• Average semester enrolment: 250 students.
Elements of Assessment
• Quizzes:– 10 to be done every week;– Every quiz worth max 1% with 10% of total share
in the final mark if done within a week after the material presentation
• Two invigilated on-line the tests– 25% for each test with 50% of total share in the final mark
• A case– with 50% of total share in the final mark
• Tutorials’ participation– with 30% of total share in the final mark
• Detailed description of rationale behind the assessment:– Jaworski, P. M. (2009). Regular Revision Stupid! The Retention of
Knowledge after the End of Module Delivery. Journal Advances in Higher Education, 2(1).
– Jaworski, P. M. (2009). Let us teach the way we preach: using economic concepts in IT-assisted continuous assessment scheme for introductory economics module. Journal Advances in Higher Education, 3(1).
The Quizzes
• Every quiz consists of 10 closed multiple choice questions drawn out of 10 sets of on average 70 questions.
• The quizzes serve three roles:– Contribute towards the final mark if done within
a week of material presentation,
– Give access to lecture notes for next topic and model answers for current topic tutorial questions,
– Provide opportunity to prepare for the tests.
• The attempts are limited to 10 minutes and 4 attempts in the first week.
The Tests
• The test consist of 35 questions:
– 25 are closed multiple choice questions drawn out of the same sets as for quizzes’ • 5 for every chapter• worth only a half of true/fall questions.
– 10 are new true/false questions, not released before• 2 for every chapter• worth twice more than questions known before.
• The time to do it is 20 minutes for all except for dyslectic students who are allowed for extra 10 minutes.
Problem:In the gradebook
students are not able to see the mark for graded quiz
when it is hidden.
Calculation of Week X Grade:Maximum of:
Week X lecture and Week Xa lecture.
Conclusions:
• The design of the assessment regime must be first carefully thought through with assessment goals clearly defined.
• Only after such design stage it could be translated into technical structure within any IT platform.
• The IT platform limits considerably possibilities of design or make the technical structure unclear and complicated.
• Promised and actual Options are sometime totally divergent!
Questions?