Getting more out of Moodle books and quizzes

Melissa Honeydew, Dr Bronwyn Isaac and Prof Ros Gleadow

MONASH

SCIENCE

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Overview

§  Who are we?

§  Quizzes.1 – weekly quizzes with a twist

§  Quizzes.2 – self-paced activities

§  Books.1 – instruction manuals

§  Books.2 – our text book

§  What next?

Our unit: SCI2010 Scientific practice and communication

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Scientific practice and communication

§  What science is and how it works (knowledge)

§  How to communicate science (skills)

§  Compulsory

§  On-campus at Clayton and Malaysia

§  ~750 students

§  We have a great team of scientists who love to experiment with Moodle

Quizzes.1 Short weekly quizzes (knowledge)

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Why we use quizzes as a learning tool

§  People like them

§  They improve exam performance [1]

§  Better than rereading course notes [2]

§  On-line is better paper-and-pencil [3]

§  Course content and assessor rated more positively when quizzes are

used throughout the course [4]

1. Kibble, 2011; Roediger et al., 2011; Geist et al., 1997; 2. Karpicke & Roediger, 2008 3. Derouza & Fleming, 2003. . 4. Geist & Soehren 1997.

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Our short quizzes reinforce lecture material

§  Weekly throughout semester

§  Very small participation mark - no benefit for doing well

§  Excellent participation rates

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We use hints to assist recall

§  Lots of our students take the quiz multiple times until they get it right

§  Give hints, but no correct answers until after the quiz is closed

§  Close the quiz before the next lecture

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Engage students with interesting questions

§  Use photos, flow charts, graphs

§  Tell a story with words or a video

§  Use of variety of question types

Quizzes.2 Long self-paced activities (skills)

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Our long quizzes focus on skills

§  Two longer self-paced learning activities to replace workshops

•  Writing (and plagiarism) •  Literature Review Tool Kit

§  Include resources

§  Variety of questions

•  Automatically marked •  “Self marked” long answers •  “Marked” by tutor

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Literature Review Tool Kit

§  Four quizzes (and more)

§  Include reading tasks

§  Very small participation mark

§  Culminates in refined research

question and plan for feedback

from tutor

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Literature Review Tool Kit

§  “Self marked” questions

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Literature Review Tool Kit

§  Questions that require tutor feedback

Books.1 Assignment instructions (skills)

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Moodle instruction books

§  Short Moodle booklets provide assignment instructions

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Moodle instruction books

§  Navigable

§  Easy to update

§  Can monitor

§  Links to Turnitin, Assignment submission boxes

§  Link to from email and forum posts

Books.2 The text book (knowledge)

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The Moodle text book – so much better than a PDF

§  Navigable

§  Easy to update

§  Video clips

§  Monitor use

§  Links to relevant news articles etc

§  Link to from emails and forum posts

What next?

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What next?

§  The students like the quizzes (we asked them)

We want to improve the hints

§  Some students find the writing activity tedious/too easy

We want to engage high performing students

§  We don’t know what the students think of the books

We want to find out

We want to make the text book better

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Thanks for listening

§  What do you think?