Yesterday I discussed online quizzing in SPARK with several faculty teaching large General Education courses and I thought I’d share some of the strategies we discussed:
Give a Practice/Low Stakes Quiz
Before you start into your “real” quizzes, give students a short simple quiz that counts for few (if any) points; just so they have the opportunity to adjust to the mechanics. The Quiz tool in SPARK is relatively straightforward, but giving students a practice run can be an important way to mitigate student anxiety and gives them a chance to troubleshoot any possible technology issues. If students are having issues with SPARK on their computer, you can direct them to the OIT Help Desk (545-9400) or https://hds.oit.umass.edu/help.html
How Much Time to Give
With online quizzes, you have two decisions to make: how long the quiz is available and how long a student has to work on the quiz once it is started. Giving a generous amount of time for availability when the quiz can be taken can makes it convenient for students’ schedules and may lessen the number of requests you get from students to take it outside of the scheduled time. 72, 48, and 24 hours were common times for having a quiz available. Many of the instructors I talked to use online quizzes to make sure students are doing the reading, so they must be completed before the particular reading will be discussed in class. How long to give students after they have started a quiz is also important to consider. I have heard from instructors who will take the quiz themselves and then append a certain amount of time to however long it takes them. This might be double the time, or tacking on 20 minutes, it will all depend on the format and difficulty of the quiz, as well as your students’ expectations. Remember that you can always ask the students if they are receiving enough time. Faculty recommended starting strict and moving to leniency as needed rather that trying to go in the opposite direction.
Question Types
SPARK provides a variety of question types ranging from multiple choice questions (that are automatically graded by the system) to open response questions (that must be graded by an instructor or a Teaching Assistant). Multiple choice questions are convenient for automatic grading and can be critical for large classes with few TAs. It is worth knowing that quizzes can combine multiple question types, so a quiz could have 10 multiple choice questions followed by an essay question. Other question types allow you to do matching, short answer, or questions based around a specific calculation. Usually choosing questions types comes down to a balance of your goals for the assessment vs. time for grading. Selecting a consistent format for your quizzes can be an important part of making students comfortable with the process.
Question Design
Designing questions for online delivery can present new challenges for instructors used to authoring in-person quizzes. Foremost, one must assume online quizzes in SPARK are effectively open book. Some instructors attempt to compensate for this by giving very short amounts of time for questions, but it is my belief that this raises a variety of issues; first, there will always be students that can run a quick Google search in the time that it takes another student to even read or focus on the same question. Consider how you can design questions that require deeper understanding than a quick web search. I always recommend looking to old test questions you can use, this has the benefit for you of being able to revise existing questions while also giving students a taste of what will be expected in the higher stakes activities for the course.
Useful Quiz Options
SPARK provides a variety of options for customizing quizzes that can add some flexibility and interactivity to surpass that of traditional paper quizzes. Of particular interest to instructors using multiple choice questions is the ability to write a “bank” of questions from which each student receives a random sampling. There is also the ability to create quizzes that can be taken multiple times (and then options for which grade counts) as well as practice ungraded quizzes. If you have students with documented accommodations, SPARK doesn’t have a particularly easy way to change how much time a specific student is given for a quiz, but it is possible to duplicate a quiz and then change the settings for time and availability.
I hope this summary will be useful, if you have other thoughts or questions about using online quizzes please share them here. Remember, you can always contact our Instructional Media Lab (545-2823) for individual help on setting up a quiz in SPARK.