My Assessment of Online Assessment: D+
So this semester I tried something completely different, online assessment. I assigned my students a 10-15 point online quiz each weekend. To cut down on cheating, I used a system that give each student a slightly different question (the server then grades the assignment). The results were abysmal. I will be removing in after only one semester.
Many students lost all the points by making simple small math errors. They understood 95% of the question, and got 0% of the grade. This is the same reason I dislike multiple choice exams. I want the score to be an accurate representation of the level of your understanding. For most concepts I teach in chemistry, a multiple choice questions does not effectively measure that.
A colleague of mine overheard a student of his remarking “I didn’t have time to do my Anatomy and Physiology online quiz last night so I had my mom do it.”
Some things are not done better online. I remember hearing the results of a study not to long ago that said each year, incoming freshman classes are more ‘OK’ with cheating. They seem to be doing it more and more in high school, and it is carrying over into college. Well, when it is that easy�
April 8th, 2006 at 3:21 am
My experience is that you can use multiple choice to test deep chemical understanding but you have to make the questions up yourself. I have found all publisher supplied questions to be unusable for a thorough assessment. I have been using automated grading in organic chemistry for 4 years and I am satisfied that it can be done correctly. It does, however, require a lot of time up front to create a question bank that provides a concept testing profile similar to a written test. It is also important to provide sample quizzes ahead of time so that students understand what is being asked in the question format. Most of the questions I use cannot be answered without writing out the answer in a format similar to a written test.