Your first questions

Question stem and general feedback

The question and the solution go naturally together and are presented together on the authoring form along with the marks available.

Figure 2.2

Current category: Store your question in a sensible category so that you can find it again.

Save in category: One of a variety of methods provided for saving/moving questions between categories.

Question name: A descriptive name is sensible. This name will not be shown to students.

Question text: You may use the full functionality of the editor to state the question. If you have already written your questions in Word you will find that Word's formatting and the editor are not directly compatible. Please copy your question text from Word then select the 'paste from Word' tool (the one with a ‘W’ on it) from the editor's tool bar. Then paste your text into the window that opens and select 'insert'. If you do not do this you are likely to paste in lots of formatting information that Word deems necessary but the VLE doesn't use, or worse that interferes with the VLE's own formatting.

Images may be included by clicking on the 'add image' icon; a tree. This icon allows you to upload images from your hard disk where they will be stored with the question. We recommend that images that appear within questions should not exceed 570 pixels wide so that the final quiz will fit nicely on a 1024 pixel wide screen.

Default mark: Decide on how to score your questions and be consistent. N.b. If you are asking a question that you do not wish to count towards the total score you should set the Default mark to zero. However you will still need to mark one response as correct with a Grade of 100%.

General feedback: We recommend that all questions should have this box completed with the correct answer and a fully worked explanation. The contents of this box will be shown to all students irrespective of whether their response was correct or incorrect. We do not recommend that authors rely on using the machine generated 'Right answer' (from the iCMA definition form) as this is:

• Written by a computer.
• Frequently not the full right answer.
• Cumbersome for some question types and non-existent for others.

Response matching and specific feedback

Figure 2.3

The format of these fields differs across questions. This example is from our True/False question example.

Correct answer: Either True or False.

Specific feedback: That is feedback that is specific to the response. In this instance to the possible answers of True and False.

Please spend a little time looking at how these parts of the authoring form come together to give the completed question shown in Figure 2.1. Pay particular attention to how the specific feedback and general feedback are made to read nicely when put together.

Create your first True/False question

Now that you have seen how to do it please create your own True/False question.

Preview your first question

Having written your first question the next step is to 'preview' it. That is to look at it as your students will look at it.

Edit your first question

You may, or may not, wish to amend your words, but what you do need to know is how to make such amendments.

Pros

1. The question type has a very simple structure.
2. And consequently is a good point to start learning how to write questions.

Cons

1. The student is provided with the statement.
2. Their choice is then one of only two options, True or False.
3. The probability of guessing the correct answer is high at 50%.
4. If the quiz pass mark is 40% and the quiz consisted solely of True/False questions then a large majority of students could simply pass by guessing.

The Question, default mark and general feedback

As with the True/False question the Numerical question type starts with

• the question stem.
• the default mark.
• the general feedback which is shown to all users.

Figure 3.3 Part of the Numerical question authoring form

But here you will see what looks like something special surrounded by '$$'. What that something special is, is TeX (you might like to Google it) and TeX allows you to create properly formatted mathematics on the screen. For our purposes we are not going to go much further than displaying a fraction (e.g. the TeX for one half is \frac{1}{2}) but it's important to know that there are features for handling mathematics properly and if you are a mathematician or a physicist then you will want to explore our variable numeric and the STACK question types in due course.

Response matching. grade and specific feedback

This time the response matching consists of a value and a tolerance (labelled as 'Error').

Figure 3.4

As the example shows you can look for both correct answers and common mistakes and in mathematics there are plenty of known malrules, or common errors, that are best addressed with corrective explanations. Indeed one of the most powerful aspects of eAssessment is that the computer will store and analyse all your students' answers so if multiple students give the same incorrect response then you will be able to track that, and do something about it.

For the Error please do remember that you are dealing with a digital computer that holds numbers in binary form. That binary form cannot hold exact values for some common numbers. A typical example is 1/3. As a decimal number this is 0.33333 with the 3 recurring forever. But in binary form there are a fixed number of bits allocated. Once the number goes beyond that number of bits you lose accuracy. So if the answer you are looking for is 0.3333 and the student answers 0.33333 then you need to allow a suitable tolerance.

But it is both worse and better than that. Why is is worse? In the example above can you be sure that -7 is indeed accurately held as exactly -7 down to the last bit? As you don't know the inner working of the computer you can't answer that. So is an Error of 0 OK? At this point things get better because behind the scenes Moodle adds a tolerance to the 0 and Moodle's tolerance is based on the precision used on your computer. So the Moodle engineers have ensured that the above question will work as shown.

The value for Grade should be set between None and 100%. This is then applied to the default mark when calculating the student's mark for the question. You will find that the system will demand that at least one of your response matching options must be worth 100%.

At run-time the student's response is compared to each of the answers included on the form in turn. If the response match succeeds the specific response is displayed and the response matching terminates. If a response match fails then the next one is tried.

Note the final Response match of '*'. This is a wild-card meaning match any other response. So this catches all those students who have failed to give one of your anticipated answers.

Once the response matching has been completed what happens next depends on the grade and whether there are more hints to be displayed.

Multiple tries

This is the section of the authoring form that lets you give hints or direct your students to part of your teaching materials that they should perhaps study again.

Figure 3.5

It is worth noting that a proportion of students who answer incorrectly at the first try will be able to correct their answer with no further help. It is usual therefore for the first hint to say little more than "Pay attention and try again."

Here we give two hints so the student gets a maximum of three tries.

And as we're giving hints we also apply a penalty, again as a percentage of the default score. In our example a correct answer at the second attempt will score 66.66667% x 1 and a correct answer at the third attempt will score 0.333333.

Please spend a little time looking at how these parts of the authoring form come together to give the completed question shown in Figure 3.1 and 3.2. Pay particular attention to how the specific feedback and general feedback are made to read nicely when put together.

Unit handling, Units, Tags, Created/last saved

These are sections that are used less often and in fact we will not be using them at all.

Create your first Numerical question

Now it's your turn. Start with something that does not include TeX so you can be clear how the response matching works.

Preview your first question

Having written your first Numerical question the next step is to 'preview' it. That is to look at it as your students will look at it.

Edit your first Numerical question

Again use the Edit feature to massage your words, but this time include some TeX too.

Pros

1. The Numerical question type is a constructed response question. That is the student has to construct their own answer and have sufficient confidence to submit it. This is good.
2. There is little chance of guessing the right answer.
3. With the TeX filter Moodle is able to display mathematics in the correct format.

Cons

1. If no units are used then the question is straightforward to use.
2. Students learn mathematics by practise so really you would like multiple versions of this question. With the Numerical question type this means making lots of copies and then altering the numerical values in each. How much better it would be if the question could use variables such that the computer could generate lots of different versions. We will come to questions that allow the use of variables later in this course.

The Question, default mark and general feedback

As with the previous questions the short answer question type starts with

• The question stem.
• The default mark.
• The general feedback which is shown to all users.

Figure 4.2 Part of the Short answer question authoring form

Note the row of underscores in the question text. At run time they will be replaced by an input box of equivalent width.

Response matching, grade and specific feedback

The Short answer question type will search for a sequence of consecutive characters within a response. The wildcard character '*' allows other words and characters, including the space character, to be present.

Figure 4.3

The value for Grade should be set between None and 100%. This is then applied to the default mark when calculating the student's mark for the question. You will find that the system will demand that at least one of your response matching options must be worth 100%.

At run-time the student's response is compared to each of the answers included on the form in turn. If the response match succeeds the specific response is displayed and the response matching terminates. If a response match fails then the next one is tried.

Note the final Response match of '*'. This is a wild-card meaning match any other response. So this catches all those students who have failed to give one of your anticipated answers.

Once the response matching has been completed what happens next depends on the grade and whether there are more hints to be displayed.

Multiple tries

This is the section of the authoring form that lets you give hints or direct your students to part of your teaching materials that they should perhaps study again.

Figure 4.4

Here just one hint is given.

Once again a penalty is applied.

Create your first Short answer question

Now it's your turn. As you write your question ask yourself how many alternative correct answers you can think of but do not try and response match them all. Be content to cover the most obvious responses and leave it at that.

Preview your Short answer question

Having written your Short answer question the next step is to 'preview' it. That is to look at it as your students will look at it.

Pros

1. The Short answer question type is a constructed response question. That is the student has to construct their own answer and have sufficient confidence to submit it.
2. Modern browsers have an in-built spelling checker and you can ask your students to only submit correctly spelled answers. If I tell you that I have seen 14 different spellings of 'temperature' you will understand that such a variation makes accurate response matching very difficult. Ensuring you are only dealing with correctly spelled words is an important first step.

Cons

The response matching features are too limited.

1. There is no feature for handling synonyms yet we all know that languages are very rich, extensive, fertile, …..
2. There is no feature for accepting a different word order.
3. The browser spelling checker is unlikely to include specialist scientific and medical words. Also it will only use the language used on the computer and will not check the spelling of foreign words.
4. Catering for misspellings is difficult.
5. Unless your required answer is very specific you will have to allow time to check how your response matching copes with real student responses. And also time to adjust your response matching in the light of those answers.

The Question, default mark and general feedback

As with the previous questions the Multiple choice question type starts with

• The question stem.
• The default mark.
• The general feedback which is shown to all users.

Figure 5.2 Part of the Multiple choice editing form

Here we have uploaded the image of the score, having previously resized the image to make it fit nicely. If you export this question then the image will be exported as part of the question.

Note that here the general feedback is empty, but only because there is nothing more to say to someone who answered correctly. As you will see the Multiple choice question type, along with some other question types, has another section on the form that can be used to give feedback to all wrong answers.

Figure 5.3

We recommend that you only use this question type for questions that require a single choice. We will come to question types that allow multiple choices later.

Response matching, grade and specific feedback

Figure 5.4 The answers section

This consists of the music files uploaded using the 'link' icon as explained on the following page. OU Moodle allows the normal file text link name to be hidden by replacing the text with a dot. Behind the scenes each audio track is specified by something similar to the following

.

The value for Grade is set between None and 100% but again we have chosen not to give feedback here.

At run-time the student can click on the sound player to hear each recording in turn.

Once the response matching has been completed what happens next depends on the grade and whether there are more hints to be displayed.

Combined feedback

All questions that require the student to make one or more selections have a 'Combined feedback' section that comments on the combination of their answers. For this question the author chose to use this section for the feedback. Multiple choice questions have a variety of sections for giving feedback that you can use as you please.

Figure 5.5

Multiple tries

This time the section is empty and the student is allowed just one try at this question.

Create your first Multiple choice question

Now it's your turn. Before you start, find a picture that you can use in your question.

Preview your Multiple choice question

Having written your Multiple choice question the next step is to 'preview' it. That is to look at it as your students will look at it.

Pros

1. The Multiple choice question type can be used with all subject areas.
2. And as the musical score example shows it can be used imaginatively to test higher order skills.
3. Common errors can be exposed by suitable distractors and feedback specific to that misunderstanding can be provided.

Cons

1. The student is provided with the correct answer as one of the choices.
2. Choosing the answer by recognising it is not the same as constructing the answer.
3. There is a probability of guessing the correct answer. If there are four choices the probability is 25%. To discourage guessing various penalty mechanisms have been suggested and implemented. Moodle allows the author to attach negative marks to options and also includes the ability to use Certainty Based Marking. However most authors use neither of these facilities and score the correct choice at 100% and incorrect choices at 0%.
4. It is not necessarily easy to provide plausible distractors. At least three are required and implausible distractors are better omitted. The skill in writing multiple choice questions is in providing questions that expose misunderstanding of the materials under test such that suitable distractors can be written. The response to the distractors can then be used to provide remedial feedback to help students overcome their misunderstanding. But writing good distractors is difficult. Not only is it difficult but it deflects the author and the student from learning about the correct answer and why it is correct. The result is often a set of distractors that are provided solely to comply with the style of the question rather than to test the students knowledge of the subject.

Advice on writing multiple choice questions

1. Provide a sufficient number of distractors.
2. Distractors based on common student errors are very effective.
3. Correct statements that do not answer the question are often strong distractors.
4. Do not create distractors that are so close to the correct answer that they may confuse students who really know the answer to the question.
5. Avoid resorting to using complex wording in distractors otherwise your test may become a test of reading comprehension rather than an assessment of whether the student knows the subject matter.
6. Be especially aware of ambiguity. Ask a colleague to review your questions.
7. Avoid making the correct answer longer than the rest. This happens because the author wants to get the shades of meaning exactly right. Students know this and act on it.
8. Be careful in your use of grammar. For example the correct answer to An animal with a trunk is an [dog / elephant / frog]. is given away by the 'an'.
9. And finally ensure that there is only one correct response

The Question and general feedback

While the Description is not a question it uses the same tools as the questions to allow you to complete the form. So it has fields for:

• The question stem.
• The general feedback.

But you will normally only use the first field. And, of course, there is no mark.

Figure 6.3

Create your first Description

Now it's your turn.

Preview your Description

Having written your description the next step is to 'preview' it.

The Essay question form

Figure 7.2

Create your first Essay

Now it's your turn.

Preview your Essay

Having written your Essay the next step is to 'preview' it.