Online Pre-lab Quizzes

Elizabeth Angstmann

First Year Physics Director

Background information

Used with first year physics courses

Higher Physics 1A and Physics 1A: Blackboard (session 1)

Higher Physics 1A and Physics 1A: Moodle 2.0 (session 2)

Higher Physics 1B and Physics 1B: Maple TA (session 2)

Purpose of our labs:

Appreciate that theory is based on actual experiments (and

reinforce the theory)

Learn to calculate uncertainties and appreciate their

significance

Advantages of Online prework

Cuts down on plagiarism

Faster start to the lab

Students felt that it helped them prepare for the lab

Works well for large servicing classes

Blackboard

Blackboard

Blackboard

Blackboard

Blackboard

Blackboard

Blackboard

Problems with Blackboard

Hard to get pictures to display

Can not have a “calculated formula” question with more

than one part

Fails in an unpredictable manner

Putting students into groups and setting up sessions is

tedious

Can’t apply penalties for multiple attempts: I took the

average of 3 attempts

We had a backup: printed copies of the questions that

students could pick up and return to the first year office.

But…………

Lab sessions ran much more smoothly without having to

mark prework at the beginning.

Demonstrators commented that students got through

the work more quickly as they appeared to be better

prepared.

So…..

Session 2 we decided to see if Maple TA or Moodle 2.0

worked better than blackboard.

Maple TA

Maple TA

Maple TA

Maple TA

Maple good at

Units

Calculated formula questions: very versatile, can fill in

tables for which the data has been randomly generated

No problems getting pictures to appear

Students used to using it as maths is a corequisite

Easiest to set up the questions in

Can upload a list of students as a group

If they get the question wrong you can give them

feedback, they really like this

Disadvantages

Another system they need to login to (and you need to

download marks from etc.)

Doesn’t work well with Macs…. Leads to some issues for

us

I could never get it to generate graphs with random

numbers successfully

Moodle 2.0

Moodle 2.0

Moodle 2.0

Moodle 2.0

Moodle 2.0

Moodle 2.0

Moodle 2.0

Advantageous Moodle 2.0

Can do calculated formula questions with multiple parts using the same data (though there are some notable limits to this, can not do tables)

There was never any problems with students accessing it when it was set up properly

Easier to put students in groups than in blackboard (alphabetized in order of surname) but not as easy as maple (can’t upload a spreadsheet)

Have option to penalize students if they get the answer wrong on the first attempt…. but this is problematic for multiple part questions. Students must obtain a satisfactory score on each assessment component of the course, as well as obtaining at least 50%, in order to pass the course.

Advantageous Moodle 2.0

Can give some feedback to students. In calculated formula

questions you can give no marks for a given response but

separate feedback. It is also possible to give feedback in

the tables but a bit harder to set up.

You can also give general feedback for the question.

Moodle 2.0 is not good at

There are some issues with regenerating sets of random

numbers

It has had some problems synchronizing this session.

Much harder to upload marks to moodle 2.0

Harder to set up questions in than Maple TA but all the

marks are in one place so less time spent afterwards…

Adaptive e learning

Adaptive e learning

Does not tie into Moodle 2.0 or blackboard yet so takes

a long time to set up enrollment and download marks etc.

(this should be fixed for next session????)

Students like the interactivity

Some students found it frustrating that they could not

progress until they answered each part correctly or got it

wrong 4 times.

It took a long time for me to track down where a student

went wrong when they came to ask about the questions.

What the students say…

Did the online prework help you prepare for the lab?

Almost all said yes

There was no clear preference for Blackboard/Maple TA

or adaptive e learning among the students doing 1B

Students liked longer prework tests, they especially liked

analysing data in a similar way to in the lab. I found this

surprising.

My Conclusion

Moodle 2.0 has problems but it is currently in the Pilot

stage so hopefully they will be fixed. The layout is nicer

than Blackboard and while the questions take a while to

set up they do not stop working for no reason. We will be

using Moodle for 1A and 1B this year.

Adaptive e learning has a lot of potential and will

hopefully fit in seamlessly with moodle 2.0 at some stage

in which case we will consider using it again

Maple is good (probably the best for setting up questions

in) but is another system and does not interface well with

the Macs we use in first year physics