SALES CEPEDA COMUNICA AL GOBERNADOR EL ENVIO DEL PROGRAMA ESCOLAR MERIDA ORILLAS DETERIORADAS 12/06/1883 12/06/1883 368 318 14 1 ADMINISTRACION DE LA

Teemu Kerola and Harri Laine

Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki [email protected]

Abstract

Computer checkable self tests and quizzes are a technique used in many e-learning courses. Typically the problems have been defined by the course designer. In this paper we introduce an approach of using students as composers of these problems. We discuss briefly the benefits of this approach and the problems of implementing it using current e-learning environments. We discuss also tool requirements for this approach.

1 Computerized feedback problems

Many web based e-learning courses contain self tests, quizzes or assessment tasks that are marked by computer. They are mainly used by the student herself to assess her skills in the topic at hand. The problems may also be used to set up an exam. These tasks are interactive. The student responds to a question and the system instantaneously marks it and gives a short feedback about the answer. Feedback for an incorrect answer should be educational and instruct the student to find a correct answer. Feedback for correct answer may offer some new insights to the problem.

Learning environments provide varying types of computerized feedback problems. Single response multiple choice questions are most common. Other types include multiple response multiple choice problems, value range problems, fill in the blanks problems, and ordering and joining problems. More complex dedicated problem types like writing programs or database queries have also been uses in Computer Science courses. The setting of the problem may be graphical or textual. For example, a value range can be given within a picture or graph, or an ordering problem can request the student to assess a set of pictures and put them in some specific order.

Most environments provide only static problems. Dynamic problems contain parameters and offer a larger variety but marking and providing proper feedback is more complicated. 2 Students as authors of computerized feedback problems

The usual way of students to get involved in computerized feedback problems is that the teacher has included them in the course material. Some learning environments keep track of students progress, but often problems can be solved anonymously.

Another, more challenging way is to let students to author the problems for other students. This implements the learning by teaching paradigm (Skinner, 1993) (R. Ploetzner, 1999). To author a new problem one must understand the topic well enough to use the question to teach other students something. One must create a relevant question, determine the correct answers for it, consider what are the typical faults, and determine what are the proper feedbacks for correct and incorrect answers.

Authoring new questions is a task very suitable for co-operative work. Students can first discuss the topic area to determine good questions that are not yet included in the course material. Finding out potential answers and proper feedbacks for them is even more challenging, and allows the students naturally to have more discussions on the topic and the pedagogy to teach it.

3 Implementation of problem authoring and problem evaluation

We have used web based self tests in many curses but self test authoring by students only in two courses. We found that implementing this approach using the current e-learning

environments was hard. Many learning environments provide a good teacher interface for authoring self tests and quizzes. They also provide easy ways for students to use the questions. However, they cannot be easily used by students to author the problems. There is typically too much administrative work and too little feedback on the use of the tasks. We would like student teams to author problems and then publish them to other students for evaluation. For example, in WebCT this would require the system administrator to establish a separate course for each student team. Students should be defined as instructors for these courses. Instructors, however, cannot test the tasks so the students would need another identity for that. WebCT has detailed student activity tracking, but when self-tests are concerned, no statistics are provided. Also, transferring questions from one course to another is cumbersome with standard instructor tools.

An ideal tool to support this approach would provide a simple way for students to build up course specific teams with minimum instructor effort. It should provide a large variety of computerized feedback problem types and simple user interfaces for composing the questions and defining their correct and incorrect answers as well as their feedback. The members of the authoring team should be able to try out the problems first by themselves and then publish them for peer evaluation. The tool should provide statistics on how the questions are answered, but in addition it should provide an evaluation mode that would provide an evaluation form for the student to fill when she is done with the problem. This form should contain questions about how easy, useful, laborious, educational, and essential the problem was. It should also contain questions about the quality of the feedback provided. An overview of the evaluation data should be automatically included in task specific metadata. These could be used later on, for example, in selecting tasks for an exam. The tool should store the tasks in standard format (IMS, 2004).

We are currently building a prototype of the tool outlined above. References

IMS, 2004. Ims Question and Test Interoperability Specification, Version 2.0, public draft. URL http://www.imsglobal.org/question/index.cfm

R. Ploetzner, P. Dillenbourg, M. P. . D. T., 1999. Learning by explaining to oneself and to others. In: Dillenbourg, P. (Ed.), Collaborative-learning: Cognitive and Computational Approaches. Elsevier, pp. 103–121.

URL http://tecfa.unige.ch/tecfa/publicat/dil-papers-2/Dil.7.1.12.pdf

Skinner, J., 1993. Learning by teaching at the university. English Teaching Forum Online 31 (4), 40–40.

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