LEARNING TO IDENTIFY AND SOLVE PROBLEMS ON

THE WEBXiaoheng Zhang

Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityHong Kong

ctxzhang@polyu.edu.hkJune 7, 2010

Limitations of Multiple Choice Questions

Multiple choice questions are the most popularly-used exercise and test items in education.

However there is the serious limitation of guessing by the students.

Methodology for Improvement

The problem can be effectively solved by deployment of an extra tier of fill-in-the-blank questions.

In a fill-in-the-blank question, the student must supply an answer out of their minds instead of selecting from an existing list, effectively eliminating the possibility of obtaining the correct answer by guessing or just by chance.

Supporting Problem Discovering and Problem Solving

By combining multiple choice questions with fill-in-the-blank questions, we can create very powerful tests or exercises which will assess and train the student’s ability in both problem discovering and problem solving.

For example, we can ask the student to point out incorrect words in a text by means of multiple choice questions, and when an incorrect word is successfully identified the student will go a step further to provide a correction in a fill-in-the-blank format.

Software Implementation

The Enhancement of a multiple choice question with a fill-in-the-blank component can be realized on the WWW by adding a new feature variable in the HTML code of the question to provide the teacher’s correct answer(s) to the fill-in-the-blank question.

If no correct answers are given in the variable, the fill-in-the-blank part will not be launched. Otherwise, a following up fill-in-the-blank question will be generated and the student’s answer will be checked against the standard answer(s) of the teacher.

Details of software implementation is given in the full paper.

WWW Presentation of a Multiple Choice Question Template

Two Example Questions in Language Learning

1. Recognizing and correcting English spelling mistakes in a natural text format,

2. Learning Chinese traditional and simplified characters in a standard multiple choice format.

Demonstration

Demonstration

Demonstration

Demonstration

Conclusion And Discussion

In WebQLd 2010, we have effectively solved the problem of quessing of multiple choice questions by adding an optional layer of fill in the blank sub-questions.

It helps to test and enhance students’ ability in recognizing, analyzing and solving problems.

On both layers of questions the teacher can prepare on-line explanations and comments in response to the behaviors of the student.

The software also allows teachers to provide alternative correct answers to a question on the multiple choice layer or the fill in the blank layer.

And in the cases of fill in the blank exercises, the student can display answers and further explanation provided by the teacher.

Further improvement of WebQLd: the copy-and-paste method for adding new questions should be made more user friendly. And in addition to using strikethrough lines, there should be a number of other representation styles of correction.

Thank you for your attention