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Question Design
Questions are sometimes called Assessment Items, c.f. the IMS QTI Implementation Model. You can choose from many different question formats, and improve the efficiency of a question by careful design of feedback and randomisation.
ELandWeb can design e-assessment items - questions - for your courses.
In designing a question, we have to consider Variety of question formats
Questions for e-assessment tests and quizzes can
- Be multiple-choice or multiple-answer,
- Accept text, numerical or mathematical input
- Be answered graphically using the mouse
Several systems now exist in which one can build questions which have a number of interdependent parts. These can be used to split a complex procedure into stages or to explore the candidate's ability to synthesise ideas and progress from familiar territory to solve a previously unseen problem.
Feedback
Feedback is vitally important - it should
- Congratulate the user on success
- Provide constructive criticism of less successful performance
- Show at least the correct answer, and if possible a model solution
- Where possible, link directly to suitable learning material, especially in the context of diagnostic testing
Feedback ties the e-assessment to the e-learning.
Random Elements
The most efficient way to create assessment items - be they numerical or textual - is to build in random elements.
For instance, suppose you are creating a simple arithmetic question, adding one 2-digit number to another.
One possible question would be
"Add 23 and 59"
If you can make a question which chooses each number randomly from the range 15 to 99 inclusive, you have 85×85=7225 possible questions.
That means that students can practise doing the question many times without encountering the same numbers twice. These algorithmic questions can be used for formative and summative assessment, and if the feedback is suitably designed, for diagnostic testing also. The possibility of neighbouring students in an examination setting having the same numbers in the question is likewise very low.
In text-based questions, it is possible to insert alternative phrases, or indeed whole blocks of text, to provide variation within a question.
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