Prominent Assessment of Students Learning and Statistical Analysis of Quizzes

Abstract

Assessment of student learning has become indispensable for determining if students meet the desired standards of course content. An innovative way of carrying out student learning assessment, which is not the typical pen-and-paper method, is by using a tool like Moodle. Moodle facilitates us to build different types of assessments. Moodle, which stands for modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment, is an enormously versatile system for course and learning management. It is a course management system (CMS), also known as learning management system (LMS) or a virtual learning environment (VLE). It is a free web application that offers a wide variety of teaching tools, and educators can use it to create effective online learning sites. One of these tools is the quiz module that represents an alternative to traditional face-to-face courses and paper-based testing. This paper presents reports on experience of 6 months (one semester) with e-learning using open-source software “Moodle” for the course Wireless and Mobile Computing (MCAE608) of IV semester MCA. As part of continuous internal assessment, online quiz was conducted using Moodle to check the level of understanding at the end of each chapter of the course. Moodle-generated quiz reports that include Grades report, Responses report, Statistics report, and Manual grading are presented in the paper. Quiz questions and students’ answers can be analyzed to carry out a psychometric analysis to identify the appropriateness of the questions stated in the quizzes and to assess student ratings on this activity as a guide for improving the teaching and learning process. The feedback from the students suggests that students were very positive about the use of Quizzes for Formative Assessment of the course. From the teacher’s perspective this method can be called as Green Assessment of Students’ Performance, since it is a paperless one. The teacher can also hook into the critical areas of poor performance of students and plan improvements accordingly.