Read: The purpose of this website

1 Overview

This website has been created as a public access site for visitors to explore how the Open University has contributed to the development of open source eAssessment systems during its stewardship of the Moodle Quiz module from 2006 - 2014. These developments provided new features in Moodle 1.6 - 2.0 and continue to provide further features in Moodle 2.1 - 2.6. The majority of these new Moodle features come from the 'assessment for learning' design that underpins the OpenMark system which we have been developing since 1996. This site contains a little of the history behind these developments but primarily provides a range of examples that visitors can interact with.

The Moodle Quiz and OpenMark together form the core of the Open University’s eAssessment facilities. They both allow Course Teams to set interactive computer-marked assessments (iCMAs) that are automatically marked by the computer with feedback being available to help students with their learning. OpenMark will provide instant feedback while the Moodle Quiz will provide either instant feedback or delayed feedback where course teams wish to withhold answers until after a specified date. From April 2008 the OU systems have become more closely integrated enabling Moodle Quizzes to include OpenMark questions and OpenMark test scores to be transferred to the Moodle Gradebook.

For Moodle 2.1 the Open University undertook a complete rewrite of the Moodle question engine and this question engine continues to underpin the Moodle Quiz eAssessment system.

Phil Butcher (email:philip.butcher@open.ac.uk)

OU VLE eAssessment project leader

2 A commitment to open source software