Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Brett Wilie on May 6, 2010 at 7:44am

Jonathan,

In doing the assessments (unit tests), I understand you guys are using moodle to create your tests so that each test is unique in that it randomizes the numbers in the problems. In reading about moodle on their website, my understanding is that is must be loaded on a server, like the school's server and used on the school's network, or maybe online. Is this correct? My situation is that while we have a computer lab that is hooked up to a network as well as the internet, I don't have classroom access to this on a student-wide basis. (My teacher computer is networked). I have 16 laptops that I can use for lots of things (Vodcasts, LoggerPro, Excel, Word, etc). Is there a "stand alone" software program for tests that would do the same type of randomizing of test questions out there?

Permalink Reply by Joe Liaw on April 17, 2011 at 8:52pm

Hi Brett:

 

Don't know if you already have this figured out, but ExamView would work great for what you were looking for....we still use it but will eventually transition to a server-based program....

 

--Joe

Permalink Reply by Craig Hill on November 14, 2011 at 9:37am

I have been working on the mastery model this year and I have evolved my assessment by asking the students not only to take a unit exam on moodle but also asking them to demonstrate their understanding of a unit objective in some way.  They can do an extra lab, a project, a vodcast, etc.  I am excited to see what is produced.  First units for this assessment is coming up soon. 

Permalink Reply by Alan Peterka on July 17, 2012 at 7:12pm

I'm looking for ideas on Foreign/Second Language Mastery. It seems to me I need to pick an area (or several areas) of mastery at first. Like maybe I focus on Mastery of sentence structure knowledge. Maybe I focus on Mastery of vocabulary recognition. Or maybe I have students focus on Mastery of responding to a language prompt in the L2 in a verbally and culturally appropriate way. The last one would be the most difficult to manage I think as the assessment part would need to be real time - in person, but I also feel like it would be the most beneficial to the student to have this mastery inform all other skill areas. Any thoughts?

Permalink Reply by Deb on July 24, 2012 at 1:51pm

Alan - for your last idea, could students record themselves so it wouldn't need to be in person? e.g. using Evernote, they do a recording and send it to your binder for grading/saving (tag it by student name so you can find all their assessments/work at any time). This also creates a portfolio of their progress over the course for you to share with them/parents at any time, or to help you at report card time.

Thoughts?

Permalink Reply by Malisa Bright on July 24, 2012 at 2:07pm

I used my Geometry summer school students as guinea pigs a bit to test out different things. Obviously, summer school is an odd duck. But here's what I did first semester, second semester, and some thoughts moving forward. Any comments appreciated.

First semester: Geometry first semester includes lots of assumptions that they should know stuff that they don't, so there was lots of remedial stuff and I didn't teach it to the level of rigor that I would during the school year. I assessed more on remedial concepts than I would during the school year as well. I'm hoping that much of the remedial stuff can be done during our 30 min per day tutorial period...but we'll see.

I got much of my thoughts from reading Dan Meyer's stuff. I had about 15 concepts that they were going to have to score a passing level on. This semester, I let them retake things an unlimited number of times and I didn't require them to prove any intermediate work. I'll definitely require proof that they've done something between times during the school year. I'm not sure how to deal with a limit on a number of times. My quizzes were usually 3 concepts (sometimes six) and sometimes included repeats because enough of the class could use a retake. My initial plan was to have two levels of quizzes on each concept, but that didn't pan out in SS (LOTS of remediation. During the year, the higher level questions will be dealt with my our dept common assessments and benchmarks, so I may not need them during the year either. I'll have to give more thought to this.

I was just hand writing quizzes each day and then making about 3 alternate versions of each concept for retakes. My hope is to get these into digital form this summer.

Second semester: I limited them to one group and one individual retake. And it just worked out that almost all the individual retakes were the day before the last day. MUCH more content and involved content second semester. I did make them show evidence of practice before I gave them an individual retake second semester. I did get some of the quizzes for second semester made on the computer. About half I think.

The best thing of the whole summer was that day of the individual retakes...watching them tutor each other and quiz each other before the noon retakes started. It was magical. They just pulled desks up to whiteboards and started doing extra practice problems. I told them at one point to stop and help me figure out how to recreate THIS vibe during the year. They did feel the deadline was what was doing it, but also that they just finally 'got' the way the class/quizzes etc. was working. So 19 out of 20 days into summer school...hopefully they'll get it sooner than that during the year.

One other change I made from first semester to second was that they weren't able to earn 'Advanced' if they got a perfect score on a retake. They could only earn 'Proficient'. They had to earn 'Basic' on all key concepts to pass (though in the end, being summer school I just relied on points...I just told them that.) I gave each quiz:  8/8 Adv 7 Proficient, 6 Basic, 5 Below Basic and 4 for writing something seemingly math related. Again, during the year, I'd need to be more vigilant about them actually scoring at least Basic.

I'm watching the FlipCon12 videos and have not hit the Assessment ones yet. :)