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February 2000, Issue 1, Volume 2 In this IssuePast IssuesAbout inventioEditorial Board
  
Web-Based Assessment: Innovating the Instructional Cycle
by Jerry Drake and Robert Holt

  

© Copyright 2000 by Jerry Drake. The right to make additional exact copies, including this notice, for personal and classroom use, is hereby granted. All other forms of distribution and copying require permission of the author.

 

The Application of Feedack Data

When checking the students self-assessment tests results before each class Holt would capture the frequency distribution graph generated by WebCT along with the test item as a bitmap for each of the questions and display them at the beginning of each class. The graph would show the distribution of the number of students who answered the question correctly as well as the distribution of incorrect guesses made by the class. The pattern of incorrect answers for each item determined how he would use this information to facilitate discussion in the class. If all the members of the class tended to make the same incorrect guess, Holt would emphasize why that particular answer was wrong. If the distribution of wrong guesses was evenly scattered then he would emphasize why a particular answer was correct.

Holt would also annotate his class notes wherever the lecture material touched on concepts with which the students experienced problems during the online assessments. Whenever he would encounter one of the annotations as the lecture progresed, it would prompt him to spend more time explaining the concepts or terms with which the students had problems.

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