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?