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Beating the Snow With Technology

Let’s face it: In Portland, we’re very used to mild winters. When freezing temperatures bring snow and icy roads, those who commute tend to go into what could politely be called “panic mode”. When Old Man Winter strikes during the last two weeks of a term, “panic mode” is not an option.

Knowing what technology resources are available to you as a teacher can help to find effective alternatives when travel is difficult or impossible. Here are three examples I’ve seen these past few snowy weeks.

Online Meetings

With the threat of weather looming, many meetings on campus become uncertain. Luckily, with modern online meeting tools there’s no need to cancel or reschedule. On a snowy morning, I was able to connect via Skype video see the other participants and I could see each other’s faces. This really helps to achieve a sense of presence in a meeting. I needed to give an overview of a project and get feedback. By sharing my screen, all attendees were able to have eyes on the relevant content and discuss in real time. It was the next-best thing to being in the same room hooked up to a projector. At UP, we have Skype for Business, which makes connecting with colleagues or inviting in those from other organizations super easy.

Resources

Final Project Presentations Go Digital

If the weather is wreaking havoc with your end of term presentations schedule, consider allowing students to create a video version of their final presentation. While they won’t get the experience of presenting to a live audience, they will get a chance to develop digital literacies and be able to self-asses their own recorded presentation skills. The technology to create digital presentations is readily available. Students can create, edit and upload video directly from their mobile devices. If they need to present slides or use a computer screen, they can utilize UP MediaSpace’s built in screen capture software. The finished products can be shared via link, embedded in a Moodle forum, or uploaded to a Moodle Media Assignment activity.

Resources

Finals Snowed Out? Not Online

Teachers and students unlucky enough to have a final exam scheduled during weather events face some tough realities – canceled exams are often rescheduled weeks later, well after the last review session. One alternative to cancellation is to offer an online exam through Moodle. Moodle quiz activities can be restricted by date and time, so students simply login at the specified time and begin their test online. Now, obviously, online exams aren’t the right fit for every class and every test. A Moodle quiz is a defacto open book, open note quiz. I’ve written before about some easy methods, such as setting time limits and randomizing questions, that can help limit academic dishonesty. Ultimately it’s up to each instructor to decide if a non-proctored online format can support the learning objectives for their curriculum. Therefore, it’s important for faculty to know and consider the options that technology can provide.

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Thinking Ahead

Icy roads and snow getting in the way of your teaching goals? Let’s chat! You can always contact me at: kahn@up.edu to brainstorm (hopefully not brainfreeze) ideas about how to beat the weather winter!

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Should You Worry About Cheating in Online Quizzes?

a young man takes notes in a paper notebook while using a laptop computer

Moving assessments online has many potential benefits. For one, you can free up class time for more group or active learning activities. Out of class, LMS-based quizzing eliminates the chore of manually grading objective multiple choice, true or false, or match questions. (This last one alone is enough to pique the interest of many instructors.)

Some faculty, however, are concerned that, by allowing students to take quizzes on their own time, they are encouraging students to cheat. This is a valid concern; an online quiz is a de facto open-book, open-note test. But is that always a bad thing?

In this article, I want to discuss some strategies to help tailor your assessment methods to the online space, deter cheating, encourage the development of critical thinking skills, and get the most out of the technology tools available to you.

Strategies: Moodle settings

Let’s take a closer look at some of the settings you can tweak in Moodle to discourage cheating. Many of these are the default settings for new Quiz activities.

Set a time limit

Enforcing a time limit on a quiz is one of the easiest steps you can take. With time as a factor, students should not be able to scour their textbook or pages of Google results to find an answer for every question. On the other hand, well-prepared students may have ample time to finish without using notes. They also could be in a great position to refer back to the material to reinforce concepts and be confident in their understanding before they even get the quiz results back.

To set a time limit, head to the Moodle Quiz activity. Check the box next to Time Limit, and choose your preferred amount of time.

Use a question bank

Set up a question bank containing many more questions than you actually want to include in the quiz. Then, have the Quiz activity draw random questions for each quiz attempt. This will make it very unlikely that two students will be able to share answers. In addition to writing your own questions, textbook publishers will often be able to supply large question sets that can be imported directly into Moodle.

You can get very specific in the question bank by creating categories to draw from. For example, I may have a category titled “Chapter: 1 Questions” with subcategories of “easy,” “moderate,” and “difficult.” Once my question bank is full, I can easily set up a quiz that draws a few question for each quiz attempt from each of these subcategories to make sure each student has a unique, but balanced, quiz.

One question per page

If you set a quiz to show many questions per page, students have been known to take screenshots and share the questions (though not necessarily with the correct answers). While it’s still possible for students to screenshot each individual question page, it’s much more cumbersome, especially when the quiz has a time limit in effect. Showing one question per page is the default setting for Moodle quizzes.

Restrict review options

You can set Moodle to hide the quiz review summary until after the quiz is closed. This would keep students from reviewing questions, answers, and feedback during the quiz period. You can still allow students to view their quiz score without allowing a full review. See the Review options settings in your Moodle quiz activity to configure your preferred settings.

Embrace the open-book format

In addition to using the Moodle settings discussed above to limit cheating, you may want to consider designing your overall assessment with an open-book format in mind.

Don’t be afraid to make questions harder

Since students have notes and their book to use, you should feel free to challenge them to demonstrate a higher level of mastery of the material. Use distractor answers and questions that require critical thinking or analysis to answer. You can even refer directly to course material (e.g., a sample problem or dataset from the course textbook). You can test for sound and thorough comprehension instead of memorization or recall.

Encourage collaboration

If two or more students are working on a quiz with randomized answers, they will be unable to simply split the test up or copy from another. However, they will have the opportunity to engage with each other on the material, talk through problems, and collaboratively problem-solve.

Communicate

Students are going to use any resource they can. You know they are. And they know that you know, too. But by clearing the air and consistently communicating your philosophies and expectations — “yes, this is an open-book test, and yes, it will be very difficult if you don’t study” — you are setting your students up for success and making it less likely they will rely solely on attempting to look up answers during the quiz itself.

Final Thoughts

Moving assessments online may not be for everyone, but it’s certainly a topic worth exploring (If only to avoid ever having to use a Scantron sheet again).

Academic Technology Services is here to support you as you explore integrating technology into your curriculum. For an overview of creating question banks, configuring quiz activities, and understanding report statistics with Moodle quizzes, see my new eight-part video walkthrough for setting up Moodle quizzes, or sign up for the ATS Moodle quiz workshop in the Clark Library Digital Lab on Oct. 4, 2016.

For more tips and thoughts on education technology, you can follow me on Twitter @academictechpdx or subscribe to the #uptechtips listserve.

Much credit goes to the following articles for information and inspiration for this piece: