Category Archives: assessment
Getting your students to find Youtube videos for their assignment
Coming up with different assignments that will motivate students and enhance their learning experience can be a big challenge. Here is an idea that may help you though.
As a chemistry lecturer I asked the students to find a chemistry related YouTube video and upload it to Moodle, the college learning management system, using the “glossary” function. (If you don’t have a learning management system you can set up an educators account on the free social bookmarking tool – Diigo.)
The one stipulation was that the students had to check that their chosen video was not already uploaded onto Moodle by a colleague. The students then rated each video, in accordance with specified criteria, with the average rating used as the grade for the student for that assignment. With over 80 students in that particular class each student watched over 80 chemistry related videos. Despite the standard of video chosen varying dramatically, the enthusiasm for this chemistry assignment expressed by the student was immense. The only impact personally was to quickly check that each video chosen was appropriate i.e. contained no explicit material. At the end of semester as a lecturer I was then able to keep decent videos that the students had found for future years.
Assessment
This page provides links to the use of technology to support or deliver assessments to your students
Related articles
- Screencasting and assessment (enhancingteaching.com)
- Adventures in Assessment (ideasandthoughts.org)
- Rethinking Writing Rubrics with Maja Wilson (nancy-rubin.com)
Screencasting and assessment
Prezi Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Screencasts have multi applications when it comes to assessment.
Students can record a particular task captured on their computer and present it as their assignment. They may also prepare a presentation (e.g. through Prezi or MS powerpoint) or a poster / mindmap and use the the screencasting tool to provide narration supporting the presentation or poster.
Lecturers can provide assessment tips or guidance through a screencast in advance of the assessment. Furtermore lecturers can also provide feedback to thier students
Related articles
- Screencasting (enhancingteaching.com)
- A brief guide to ScreenR.com – the web based screencasting tool (enhancingteaching.com)
- A brief guide to screencast-o-matic – a free screencasting tool (enhancingteaching.com)
- A brief guide to Jing – the free screencasting tool (enhancingteaching.com)
- The Ease of Screencasting (mistermitchell3.wordpress.com)
A brief guide to screencast-o-matic – a free screencasting tool
Another free screencast tool. Like its counterparts of ScreenR and Jing there are premium versions also available at a specific price, providing additional functionality.
Good points
- Its free
- it allows 15 minutes video as opposed to the 5 minutes on offer through Jing and ScreenR
Bad points
- It is not as intuitive to use at first but once you get used to it, you will have no problems
- There is a watermark in your video with the free account
There are a series of tutorials on the use of screen-o-matic on their YouTube channel
Related articles
- What is screencasting (enhancingteaching.com)
- 8 Free Screencasting Tools For Making Video Tutorials (smashingapps.com)
- Gregory Hill on storytelling, giving student feedback and improving writing with Jing (joedale.typepad.com)
- A brief guide to Jing – the free screencasting tool (enhancingteaching.com)
- A brief guide to ScreenR.com – the web based screencasting tool (enhancingteaching.com)
A brief guide to Jing – the free screencasting tool
JIng (Photo credit: blogpocket)
The always-ready program that allows you to instantly capture images and record video on your computer—then share them with anyone through a variety of web 2 tools. The video below gives a nice introduction to Jing and how easy it is to use.
Good points
- It’s easy to use
- it’s free
- It captures both picture and movie from your screen
- it’s very easy to link with other web 2 tools i.e. twitter, facebook etc
- You can download the movie onto your computer to edit if you have an editing program
Bad points
- You are limited to five minutes recording
- you have to install the program on your PC/Mac
If you like what you have just seen but don’t want to download it yet – Try an interactive Jing Tutorial
Related articles
- TechSmith Announces Changes to Jing Pro (freetech4teachers.com)
- Five Best Screen Capture Tools (blowfish12.wordpress.com)
- Screencasting and student feedback (joedale.typepad.com)
Student generated content as an assessment
There are a variety of tools that can be used in moodle allowing students to generate reusable learning objects. Click on each of the each on the links below to find out more and how they can be used to get students to generate content to help themselves and their peers learn a particular topic :
Related articles
- Getting your students to find Youtube videos for their assignment (enhancingteaching.com)
- Assessing Collaborative Work (lynnmunoz.me)
Moodle Glossary
The glossary activity module allows participants to create and maintain a list of definitions, like a dictionary.
Glossary can be used in many ways. The entries can be searched or browsed in different formats. A glossary can be a collaborative activity or be restricted to entries made by the teacher. Entries can be put in categories. The auto-linking feature will highlight any word in the course which is located in the glossary.
For information on how to set up a glossary please look at the video below
The wonderful Michelle Moore from Remote Learner gave a presentation at MoodleMoot 2012 in Ireland where she highlighted the huge potential behind Glossaries
For more information on Glossaries please visit: http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Glossary_module
Moodle 2 Databases
Databases
The database activity module allows the teacher and/or students to build, display and search a bank of record entries about any conceivable topic. The format and structure of these entries can be almost unlimited, including images, files, URLs, numbers and text amongst other things. Similar to the glossary option the database module is a great activity that can be utilised as a student assessment, allowing students to generate content for the rest of the class (and future classes) to learn from. Three main features distinguish databases from glossaries
Databases allow the teacher to provide specific fields for students to populate with information
You have a variety of template options
You can format the how the final product looks very easily.
The screencast below illustrates how to set up databases
For more information go to: http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Database_activity_module
Making online quizzes using Moodle
Frequent in-class quizzes have been associated with positive learning outcomes including increased student achievement, attendance, and confidence (Ruscio, 2001; Wilder, Flood, & Stomsnes, 2001). Frequent quizzing reportedly maintains student study effort and promotes course engagement (Smith et al., 2000; Sporer, 2001). In general students rate the quizzes favorably and believe they are helpful in preparing for in-class examinations. Practice tests help students evaluate their learning and focus study effort accordingly (Maki, 1998).
