Giving Feedback with Moodle Calculated Questions
Use case: kid encounters a tough question on Moodle homework. I want to give them some help but only if they need it.
Catalogued here for my future reference.
Oh, you actually want to know more about these pictures? Pictured is a homework/quiz/test question from Moodle, an open source course management system. Specifically, it’s a Calculated Question, meaning all the numbers in the problem could be regenerated for each kid or each attempt. If you look at the fourth gallery photo, you’ll see what it takes to write solutions in this system.
Wasn’t really the reason for these posts, but you may also find it interesting that these Calculated Questions allow partial credit answers. I write formulae to common mistakes and choose the portion of credit I want awarded. On this problem, for instance, the kids might forget to calculate speed of sound at the given temperature and might instead use the speed of sound at room temperature.
The whole Moodle system is pretty amazing, actually. Many thanks to my new colleague Meghan Bjork for introducing me to it.
I think calculated questions are one of the keys to SBG. They allow students to assess at their own pace and re-asses as needed. I’ve been using ExamView to write mine, but it’s so annoying to transfer the scores over to ActiveGrade. It looks like Moodle would allow me to skip this step, but does it have a way to display grades by standard? If so, I may be sold!
Hmm…the only SBG tool for Moodle I know of is mentioned in a comment here: http://shawncornally.com/wordpress/?p=860.
I used to use ExamView and trust me, Moodle >> ExamView on these variable-type questions. Way more flexibility, especially in the feedback arena. Lemme know how SBG + Moodle looks if you wind up researching it?
I’m definitely gonna look into Moodle. Didn’t know it was open source. Now I’m wondering if I can link it to the system I’ve been using in Physics. It was built by a coworker of mine and he recently made the guest login more functional so you can see how the questions connect directly to the standards based gradebook. Check it out if you have a chance: socraticbrain.com. If I can link the two, then I could use it for my Algebra class as well.