Abstract
BackgroundComputer-aided learning management systems (LMSs) are widely used in higher education and are viewed as beneficial when transitioning from conventional face-to-face teaching to fully online courses. While LMSs have unique tools for transferring and assessing knowledge, their ability to engage and assess learners needs further investigation. This paper focuses on a study examining the LMS “Moodle” to ascertain the effectiveness of “Moodle quizzes” to improve, assess and distinguish knowledge in a civil engineering course at an Australian university. The course has a database comprising 62 formative and 61 summative quiz questions with embedded text, images, audio and video. This study investigates the use of these quiz questions with four course cohorts and 169 students. The quizzes assessed competencies of students during various stages of a study period through automated marking. The suitability of questions to assess and distinguish student knowledge levels was determined using a psychometric analysis based on facility index (FI) and the discrimination index (DI) statistics embedded within the Moodle quizzes.ResultsThis study highlights strategies used to set and review quiz questions for formative and summative assessments. Results indicated that students were engaged and satisfied in the formative assessment because they viewed the interactive videos between 2 and 6 times and 65% of students attempted all the formative questions. The FI indicated student pass rate for the summative questions and DI indicated the difficulty of these questions, while the combination of FI and DI results separated students with different knowledge levels. Using these Moodle statistics provided information to make effective decisions on how to improve the summative quizzes.ConclusionThe multimodal quizzes were effective in teaching and assessing a theoretical engineering course and provided efficient methods to replace conventional assessments. The FI and DI indexes are useful statistical tools in redesigning appropriate sets of questions. Time-poor academics will benefit from using these easily attainable Moodle statistics to inform decisions while revising the quizzes and making assessments more autonomous.
Highlights
The growth of online learning in recent decades has resulted in higher education institutes offering more online courses with up to 30% of American college and university students participating in at least one online course (Broadbent & Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, 2018; Liagkou & Stylios, 2018)
This paper discusses the comprehensive ability of Moodle quizzes to transfer and assess engineering knowledge based on a study conducted in an undergraduate civil engineering course at the University of South Australia
The paper highlights how Moodle statistics can be used to measure the effectiveness of quiz questions to award students a fair grade by calculating facility index (FI) and discrimination index (DI)
Summary
The growth of online learning in recent decades has resulted in higher education institutes offering more online courses with up to 30% of American college and university students participating in at least one online course (Broadbent & Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, 2018; Liagkou & Stylios, 2018). Alongside learning and adjusting to new technologies, educators face challenges in developing resources which will successfully engage online users, working with students’ different knowledge levels and assessing the required course objectives, all while maintaining the quality of an institute’s graduates. Various learning management systems (LMSs) and tools are available to develop digital resources for courses which were previously solely based on traditional face-to-face teaching. Moodle provides different user-friendly tools such as “quizzes”, “forums”, “databases” and “workshops” to develop various digital resources for teaching and assessment purposes. It is viewed as a best-practice instructional mode and that students who do not engage with blended learning are academically disadvantaged (Francis & Shannon, 2013). The suitability of questions to assess and distinguish student knowledge levels was determined using a psychometric analysis based on facility index (FI) and the discrimination index (DI) statistics embedded within the Moodle quizzes
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