Quizzes
Online quizzes offer flexibility to formative and summative assessment methods. Incorporating quizzes into teaching practices helps develop a student's understanding and ability to self-regulate their learning — which in turn has an effect on their self-efficacy.
In some cases, you may wish to develop a series of multiple-choice 'knowledge check' style quizzes. This allows students to gain an understanding of their current knowledge level and to determine gaps. In doing so, students are able to regulate their own learning and take necessary steps to further their understanding.
To ensure reliability and validity in assessment practices, consider the following three key areas:
- Content — Is the assessment relevant to the prescribed curriculum?
- Construct — Is the assessment aligned to the objectives of the course?
- Predictive — Does the assessment correctly align to the progress of the student?
Consider quizzing tools as a container for your assessment. Do not be restricted by the functionality. Where appropriate, assess whether other practices or tools can be used in conjunction to offer an appropriate assessment. For example, if students carry out a practical activity in R, Matlab or Excel, the output of these tools can be entered into the online tool.
The following best practice recommendations relate directly to the tool. Whether your assessment is formative or summative will depend on the necessity of many of these settings.
For formative assessment, consider the following:
- Time Limit — Set up with no time limit to allow students to review their answers and find the best solution. Or, if you want to reproduce the exam situation, propose some timed tests with formative purposes.
- Multiple Attempts — Allow multiple attempts to give opportunities for practice.
- Quiz Responses — In formative quizzes we recommend allowing students to see what they answered, any automatic feedback generated by the quiz for correct or incorrect answers, and which questions they got wrong.
For summative assessment, consider the following:
- Shuffle Answers — Answers can be randomised to avoid students seeing the same order
- Shuffle Questions — Use question banks to show different questions to different students in the same exam
- Set Quiz Restrictions — You can restrict the quiz so it can only be taken in specific situations, e.g. 1) require students to enter an access code to take the quiz or 2) filter IP addresses and require students to take a quiz from a specific computer lab.
What online quizzing tools are available?
Canvas Quizzes
The Quizzes tool allows instructors to test students' learning, both for formative and summative assessments. For a face-to-face class, for example, Quizzes can be used to encourage students to complete reading before the class meets for a lecture on a related topic.
https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/1005709/pages/quiz-options
