Rethinking Teaching in the Sciences: April 7-27, 2008

Is it important that the answers are theirs? Isn't there value in getting them to talk things through?

Do they have to do them at home, or could you do them in the classroom? We've used the personal response system (hand held voting devices) with students (university level) to vote on particular answers. I've used it a few different ways - individually - which (if you don't record who's got which handset), lets the teacher see a graph, so gives you an over view of what they've understood as a class, but doesn't embarass those that don't do so well. We've also used them in groups, with questions that stretch them, so they have to discuss the answer. (For groups, when we've not had the gadgets, we've just used coloured squares of card. The group discusses the answer & holds up the correct colour. Saves anyone individually getting embarassed & you still get the overview of whether the class gets the general idea).

If you're wanting them to do it at home (assuming they all have PC access); I guess anonymising scores would enable the kids to see how they're doing individually (if it reports their score), you to see how the class overall is doing, but not be able to tie a score to a kid - so less pressure to get the "right" answer.

How about some questions about a potential experiment - asking them which they think is the "best" way to approach a problem; give them 5 options & get the class to vote on the best; then carry it out. Then you could get them to discuss why they picked that method & what might have been the outcome had they picked another one.
Lot of work for you, though, to try to think up all the options!

Getting them to do anything at home, and expect that they won't discuss it, is, in my opinion, a waste of time - and unrealistic in the real world. Most of us (scientists included!) discuss what we're doing with peers to get reassurance that we're doing it right.

The key to a good quiz is the type of questions you ask. If you ask a traditional factual questions, you will likely expect the same answer from each student. If you create a question that requires critical thinking and one that involves recreating the information they have learned, you will find that the students will have a unique answer and not able to submit their friend's answer. Online quizzes don't have to be multiple choice or fill in the blanks. You can require them to interpret data or compare some of the things they have learned with a concept that you give them. You could also have the students respond to other students answers and give feedback. We need to rethink how we are testing and what are we testing.

Hi Domeninc- nice to "see" you too. I do both 'after class' and weekly online quizzes. Personally I find 'after class' the most effective (10 quick questions). There are not a lot of marks involved and students get half marks for late quizzes. The benefit is in the self assessment. Cheating is not going to help them much, but as they are open book, many use them to review the text & lecture, and as exam preparation. I have had a lot of positive feedback expecially with respect to the after class tests. It harkens back to that study on information retention, with better retention each time they see the material within close proximity of the last time. Thus, I provide the lecture ahead of time (some actually go over it and read the the text), then give the lecture, then have the quiz. This gives a potential three bats at the same material within a short space of time and hopefully lifts retenetion in those that choose to use it that way. 

Cheers,

Alison

Hi Dominic, this is a question that keeps coming up at our institution, too. But short of requiring supervision (an invigilated quiz) or some sort of combination of virtual supervision or biometric process, I don't think you can be 100% sure that your quiz-taker isn't cheating somehow. As the other posters above have pointed out, your best approach is to somehow convince the student that they will benefit more from participating honestly in the assessment than by cheating. And for you to be 'sure' that their mark reflects their ability, there is just no substitute for knowing your students, by getting familiar with what they're capable of when participating in a non-assessment situation.

I know of one distance learning institution whose policy it was to phone each student after the first assignment was returned. The tutor would talk to the student about their assignment, ask if there were any areas of confusion etc., but also engage the student in a conversation about their answer to one of the questions. The student would have had to have actually done the work in order to participate in a discussion like that. In this way, they were able to flag students who may be misrepresenting their abilities.