On-Line Quizzes with Randomized Parameters

Z. Nedic, J. Machotka, and A. Nafalski (Australia)

Keywords

On-line quizzes, self-assessment, engineering education.

Abstract

Unsupervised on-line quizzes are most commonly used for formative rather than for summative assessment due to the difficulty in identifying the person performing them. Although they give students valuable feedback on their knowledge students tend not to use them unless they are assessed for marks. To encourage students to perform self-assessment, lecturers sometimes assign a small percentage of the summative assessment to students’ performance in on-line quizzes. However, this often defeats the purpose of the self-assessment as some students then aim just to achieve the highest scores. They attempt the same quiz numerous times until the set of correct answers is found and then finally perform the quiz for the perfect score. This paper presents an effective solution to this problem. It showcases on-line quizzes with randomized parameters, which we developed for early year electrical and electronic engineering courses. In these quizzes, every time a question is attempted it appears with different parameters making it impossible for students to memorize the correct answer. Rather, students have to use their knowledge to solve numerical problems in order to answer correctly. This way, on-line self-assessment quizzes are used more effectively and become a valuable educational tool.

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