MOODLE QUESTIONNAIRES: APPEALING OR TROUBLESOME TOOL IN
TEACHING/LEARNING GENERAL CHEMISTRY AT UNIVERSITIES?
Manuel Miró, Montserrat R. Delgado, Antoni Femenia, Joan Perelló, Fernando Tur
Department of Chemistry, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma de
Mallorca, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]
EDULEARN-11, Barcelona, July 4-6
Aims
Investigating the potential of Moodle Questionnaires for compiling a useful virtual database of questions and answers
Application to a General Chemistry course for agriculture engineers
Investigating the potential of Moodle as active platform for formative evaluation and getting knowledge of achievement of students’ expected competences
Assessment of students’ marks as compared with subjects wherein Moodle Questionnaires are not being exploited
Investigating the potential of Moodle as active asynchronous platform for assisting students in the process of learning
Building of Moodle QuestionnairesGENERAL CHEMISTRY
•Chemistry lab and security
•Unit operations in chemistry lab
•Atomic structure and chemical bonding
•Inorganic formulation and stoichiometry
•Organic chemistry
•Thermochemistry, thermodynamics and equilibrium
•Chemical kinetics
•Equilibrium in solution
•Titration in aqueous media
Building of Moodle Questionnaires
Moodle questionnaire is being generated by sweeping exercises from the pool of queries (right hand side) into the
questionnaire screen (left hand side)
Plot of Fitted Model
Final Mark = 0,76719 + 0,703692*Moodle Questionnaire
0 2 4 6 8 10
Moodle Questionnaire
0
2
4
6
8
Fin
al M
ark
Moodle marks against final course marks in General Chemistry
The least squares plot with a correlation factor of 0.816 indicates a moderately strong relationship between both marks supported by the goodness-of-fit (p=0.536> 0.05)
Moodle Questionnaires play a significant role in the formative evaluation of students to keep track of their learning progress and expectations of gaining the competences by the end of the course
Moodle Questionnaires
Mark
4 5 6 7 8 9
Num
ber
stud
ents
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10
Students’ average rating (from 0 to 10) of varied learning methodologies involving resolution of exercises/tasks related
to General ChemistrySolving by students
Mark
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Num
ber
stud
ent
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Solving by educator
Mark
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Num
ber
stud
ents
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Embedded answers
Mark
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Num
ber
stud
ents
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8
ADVANTAGES in using Moodle Questionnaires:
Promote students’ self-learning
Facilitate students’ formative evaluation for ascertainment of competences gained as supported by on-line educator feedback
Guide students to concentrate further efforts in those topics with low marks
Foster educator’s formative evaluation to follow the learning process of each individual student
Assist educator in better scheduling of synchronous activities
PITFALLS in using Moodle Questionnaires:
Fraud in Moodle Questionnaires is fairly easy: We have detected groups of students gathering in computer rooms at UIB to solve together the questionnaire and deliver identical answers
Students are merely interested in marks in lieu of their own learning process
Preparation of random questionnaires (that is, a unique questionnaire per student) is a time consuming task for educators to compile sufficient material
Implementation of figures in the answers of Moodle Questionnaires is rather cumbersome.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge financial support from the University of the Balearic Islands within the call of innovative projects (2010/2011) aimed at improving the quality of learning processes in Higher Education Institutions.