Online quizzes, an example of eLearning, enables students to examine their understanding of a subject despite the constraint of time and space.
Quizzes can be good tools to examine the level of understanding among students and whether they are keeping up with the progress of a course. Quizzes provide students with immediate answers and explanations pre-set by teachers, which may facilitate the process of learning as immediate feedback tends to reinforce long-term memory.
Implementation
There are potential problems in implementing computer-based assessments. With respect to the experience at CUHK, we have come up with ideas which can be useful in overcoming these challenges.
Teachers should give students a reason for doing an online quiz. Tasks with reasons tend to motivate students better than tasks without reasons.
As a unique attribute of online quizzes, teachers can incorporate colored images and a range of media (both audio and visual) into the content of these quizzes.
Teachers should provide timely assistance to students who are “stuck” with a particular question or frustrated with the virtual environment. Teachers should provide feedback upon each quiz so as to reveal the parts that his or her students have to work on. On the other hand, teachers may proceed to adjust any question of a quiz after reviewing certain items to be inappropriate.
If you want to encourage more students to participate in the online activities or quizzes, you could award a ‘prize’ for the best performance.
Teachers should update new exercises regularly. Subsequently, they should inform students about these updates through emails, forums or by SMS.
Online exercises and learning resources structured according to outcomes. The Faculty of Medicine has commenced the use of a new learning platform known as Student Learning Outcomes (SLO) Mapping Platform. The platform was arranged correspondingly into three parts: Students’ learning objectives, learning materials and assessment exercise. In order to understand whether students were achieving learning outcomes corresponding to the objectives as identified previously, the platform worked in couple with the algorithmic cycle “SLO-Learning Materials-Formative Assessment”. The cycle consisted of assessments which were in numerous stages with respect to each learning objective. The cycle began with an illustration, which exhibited outcome-based learning objectives in detail. Students had to go through these objectives so as to understand what to be learnt in the course and therefore, made better plans for their studies. Read more about the story here.
Multimedia online resources for self-learning of basic disciplinary knowledge.
The School of Life Sciences is developing a resourceful e-learning platform for students in Biochemistry Programme. The platform is composed of six modules and contains different learning media such as videos, animations, quizzes, and interactive games to demonstrate these abstract topics, illustrate their daily-life applications, and show relations among topics. The platform should assist students to become independent learners. As students’ background and previous knowledge they have had before entering the programme will be much varied especially under the new 3+3+4 curriculum, the online resources will serve as a very important tool to assist students to bridge knowledge gaps. Read more about their work here.
Online exercises and learning resources structured according to outcomes.