Welcome to day 4 of the assessment blog series and today we are looking at the Moodle Quiz activity.
What is Moodle Quiz?
Moodle Quiz enables you to create quizzes consisting of a wide range of different question types. You can create multiple choice question type quizzes, true-false questions types, and short answer questions. Each question type allows you to give feedback at all stages and this can be as detailed as you would like it to be.
Quizzes can be used for formative or summative assessment.
Another great tool available to York St John staff through Moodle, is H5P. H5P allows you to create quizzes with many different question types, however we recommend you use H5P only for formative assessment. Find more on H5P here.
Why use Moodle Quiz?
Moodle Quiz is useful:
– if you want to give your students opportunities to check understanding of work covered during the module and encourage self-directed learning
– if you want to know whether students need further teaching and guidance in specific areas
– if you want to automate marking and feedback for some elements of assessment
How do you set up a Moodle Quiz?
Please see our guide on creating Moodle Quizzes here.
You can also find detailed instructions on each of the Moodle Quiz question types in the Moodle documentation.
There are three stages to the creation of a Moodle Quiz:
- You will first need to add questions to your question bank.
- Then you create you quiz space.
- Finally you add questions from the question bank into the quiz.
Moodle Quiz allows you to create quizzes which can draw on questions from a bank randomly or you can decide on the order in which questions will appear.
Advice on writing effective quiz questions
It is important to think carefully about how you write quiz questions. Gamage et al. write that, ‘The process of appropriate structuring and selection of questions is vital in transferring and assessing knowledge in learning environments’ (2019). Dell and Wantuch observe that poorly written questions can actually penalize students who have prepared well for tests while potentially making it easier for poorly prepared students to identify the correct answers (2017, p.3).
They have summarized the literature on writing multiple choice questions and offer twelve best practice tips:
General
– Question is written using correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
– Question stem and answer choices have streamlined information and are not repetitive.
– Stem or answer choices are free of logical cues.
– Appropriate abbreviations are utilized in the stem and answer choices.
Stem
– Stem is stated in question or completion form with the blank at the end of the statement.
– Stem poses only one question or problem and is independent from previous or other questions.
– Stem is positively stated or phrased.
– Stem includes all and only the information necessary to identify the correct answer.
Answer choices
– Answer choices are comprised of 3–5 options.
– Only plausible and appropriate answer choices are utilized.
– Answer options are parallel and are similar in verb tense and length.
– There is only one correct answer.
Case Studies and Research
Whilst there are a number of members of staff using Moodle Quiz here at York St John, there are also many examples of Moodle Quiz use across other universities.
LSE Case Study: Using Moodle Quizzes to teach International Development
This case study highlights the following points:
– they take time to set up initially but in the long run they save time
– feedback is a key component of the Moodle Quiz activity and it’s important to invest time in providing this to students
University of Glasgow Case Study: Moodle Quizzes in Large-Class Teaching
This case study emphasises that students benefit from quick feedback through Moodle quizzes and that this feedback can lead to more students self-directing their learning.
Al-Azawei et al. (2019) found that students appreciated the ease of use of Moodle Quiz in comparison to other forms of e-assessment.
Optimising Moodle quizzes for online assessments
Gamage et al. (2019) highlight that online quizzes have received positive feedback from students in previous research studies and that they can produce benefits such as improved students motivation, better student understanding and active learning.
They also find that Moodle Quiz enables the effective teaching and learning of a ‘complex applied mathematics course’ (p.11). By ‘carefully staging questions with necessary repetition’ (p.11) they find Moodle quiz to be a successful tool in helping students to learn.
Computer-based Tests as an Integral Component of an EFL Course in Moodle for Non-linguistic Students
Shilova et al. observe that the quiz question type can free up lesson time by enabling students to take grammar tests online and in their own time. They do note that the time required to set up such tests can be significant and they describe this initial setup process as ‘tedious’. Nevertheless, the necessity to manually mark multiple tests is fortunately taken away by using this kind of activity in Moodle.
The effect of short formative diagnostic web quizzes with minimal feedback
Balter et al. found that using online quizzes with students resulted in more than 20% of students changing their study habits with students generally choosing to study more or study earlier. The researchers provided multiple online quizzes during the semester, testing student understanding of lecture content, allowing students to retake the test as many times as they liked. They note that students used the test to identify ‘what to repeat and study more on’ (p.239).
We are looking for York St John case studies! If anyone is willing to provide us with case studies of using Moodle Quiz or any other tools you use within Moodle or otherwise, we would be interested to hear from you. Contact the TEL team for further details.
If you have any other questions on using Moodle Quiz, please do get in touch with the TEL team.
References
Ahmed Al-Azawei, Wadhah R. Baiee and Mustafa A. Mohammed (2019) ‘Learners’ Experience Towards E-Assessment Tools: A Comparative Study on Virtual Reality and Moodle Quiz’, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), (05), p. 34. doi: 10.3991/ijet.v14i05.9998.
Azevedo, J. M., Oliveira, E. P. and Damas Beites, P. (2019) ‘Using Learning Analytics to evaluate the quality of multiple-choice questions : A perspective with Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory’, The International Journal of Information and Learning Technology, (4), p. 322. doi: 10.1108/IJILT-02-2019-0023.
Bälter, O., Enström, E. and Klingenberg, B. (2013) ‘The effect of short formative diagnostic web quizzes with minimal feedback’, Computers & Education, 60(1), pp. 234–242. doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2012.08.014.
Dell, K. A. and Wantuch, G. A. (2017) ‘How-to-guide for writing multiple choice questions for the pharmacy instructor’, Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning, 9(1), pp. 137–144. doi: 10.1016/j.cptl.2016.08.036.
Shilova, T. V., Artamonova, L. V. and Averina, S. Y. (2014) ‘Computer-based Tests as an Integral Component of an EFL Course in Moodle for Non-linguistic Students’, Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 154, pp. 434–436. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.10.187.
Sithara H. P. W. Gamage et al. (2019) ‘Optimising Moodle quizzes for online assessments’, International Journal of STEM Education, (1), p. 1. doi: 10.1186/s40594-019-0181-4.
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