Cases

Biocore 333 - Spring 2010

Biocore 333, Spring 2010, used FM to replace hard copy, hand written group worksheets that are completed in class. The handwritten copies took time for the instructors to read, give feedback, and pull out exemplary group responses to discuss in the next class. Using student responses as examples in lecture often required typing the answers to make them readable. The instructors were pleased with the pedagogy used previously- FM was just attractive to increase instructor efficiency.

To address this need, a 'Group login' was used, and a new quiz question type: essay-with-template, developed. This allowed Biocore faculty (Professors Amy Moser, Anne Griep, Trina McMahon, and John Fallon) to recreate the worksheets previously used, which included tables for students to fill out and sequenced questions. There was some time expenditure in creating the worksheets in html, but it was more than made up by the time saved grading and reading the answers.

Biocore faculty chose not to send email feedback, but to require the students to go to the course website, check their worksheet, and see the comments entered with FM. Focus group participants suggested that an email sent through FM with a link to the quiz when feedback is complete would be helpful.

Chemistry 104 and 109, Fall 2009 and Spring 2010

Sections of Chemistry 104 (350 students) and 109 (91students) used FM in 2009-10. Students were asked online essay questions either as part of the weekly quiz (104) or part of homework (109). These challenge problems required students to integrate multiple concepts from class and were intended to give practice in the process of addressing this type of problem. For the larger class, Professor John Moore and Mike Hanson created the set of general feedback tags in FM and each graded one section (out of 16). They used the multiple tags feature to combine comments relevant to a response. The eight TAs then each graded their own sections (save the two already graded) using the general tags and individual feedback typed in. The TAs gave general feedback to Mike about how students did, he composed the email feedback template, which John reviewed and sent out. For Chem 109, feedback tags were written and sent via email by the instructors without TA assistance.

Intro Bio 152 - Spring 2010

Professors Doug Rouse and Dave Abbott used Feedback Manager in their section of 152:

Doug asked students to draw graph on a template with axes as part of an online quiz. The graphing responses were easily scanned with FM. The drawing tool gave students another way to express their understanding. Doug also asked a question about their understanding so far in the class (ungraded).

Dave used Feedback Manager for an on-line open-ended question which was the last question of an in-class worksheet (other questions are multiple-choice and answered by scantron). Students got credit for the scantron portion only if they answered the on-line open-ended question which required higher-order thinking. Two out of three quizzes had an in-class portion, and the last quiz was totally on-line. A higher percentage of the students completed the last totally on-line quiz than in previous years when he did not have any on-line portion for the first two quizzes.

Intro Bio 151-2 - Fall 2009

Professors Bob Jeanne, Jenya Grinblatt, and Manish Patankar used Feedback Manager in their section of Introbio 151-2. They all agreed to have students do weekly on-line quizzes during their portion of the class. For each quiz, in his/her section of the course, the instructor asked only one quarter of the students to answer an open-ended question, which they graded and gave feedback. A different quarter of the class received the question each week so that each student received feedback from each instructor at least once, but the instructor had only one quarter of the class to grade each week.

Physics 208 - Spring 2010

Professors Mark Rzchowski and Peter Timbie used FM for quizzes in Physics 208. The instructors spent a lot of time looking at the responses, tagging, and responding for all students. However, their effort helped them find out where the students were having problems. They will try out ways to make the work-load tolerable. Mark really thinks the drawing tool is good. Mark plotted the quiz scores relative to the exam scores and found a correlation, suggesting that online quizzes are representative of students' individual work.

Horticulture - Fall 2009

Survey of Horticulture is an introductory course that fulfills the science breath requirement and is open to non-majors. In Fall '09 60 students enrolled in the course taught by Professor Sara Patterson. Students participated in weekly quizzes consisting of multiple-choice, matching, or short answer questions. The teaching assistant used Feedback Manager was to grade and provide feedback to the short answer questions. Students received feedback for each question via email and major misconceptions or interesting student responses were discussed in class. One goal of giving weekly quizzes was to increase the confidence of non-science major students. Short answer questions were used to promote synthesis of the material and were worth few points or graded as honest effort to reduce the penalty for incorrect answers. The goal was to get students using appropriate terminology in the correct context prior to the exam. Frequent low-stakes assessment gave the students a chance to evaluate their understanding of the material and to better understand the expectations for the course content e.g. level of detail, important processes.

Zoology/Botony 460 - Fall 2009

Dr. Robert Bohanan used Moodle's quizzing function and Feedback Manager in Zoology/Botany 460, an upper-level course with 95 students, primary juniors and seniors. This was the only aspect of Moodle used. His goal was formative assessment of student understanding of ecological concepts and content. Quizzes were posted each M/W/F after each lecture and were open and available to students typically for 24 hours. He used primarily essay type questions that prompt 1-4 sentence explanations, sometimes coupled with a multiple choice or true-false question. Other questions asked students to post examples with personal relevance connected to concepts presented in class. He graded Point/no point, and the quizzes made up 10% of the grade. Semi-personalized feedback was posted on-line.