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Tag: moodle (Page 7 of 7)

A laptop opened on the screen four coloured speech bubbles with a question mark in each of them

Making online exams work for you

April 20, 2017 / / 0 Comments

When it comes to online exams there are a number of questions that cause headaches for support staff and academics. Where am I going to find the time to create all the questions? How do I make sense of all these settings in a Moodle Quiz? How can I keep an eye on so many students during the exam itself?

The simple answer to all these questions is normally to speak to the right people. The first port of call, if you’re interested in getting started with online assessment, it’s your friendly Faculty Online Course Developer (or the central eLearn team), who will be happy to advise or point you in the right direction.

Moodle is of course not the only tool for conducting online exams, but it is very good at handling large groups of students who are attempting many questions all at the same time. These questions generally have a right or wrong answer, most of which can be automatically marked. Essay questions can also be posed, but these will require manual grading. (Many students these days have difficulty in writing by hand  for three hours, so if your exam is heavily essay-based you might want to investigate a tool such as DigiExam, which  allows students to type their answers (contact the eLearn team for more information about DigiExam).

A tremendous amount of question-writing effort has already been made at UoP by staff across faculties. There are close to a million questions already in Moodle, most created directly by staff but with a significant percentage having been imported from existing Word documents, shared by colleagues in other departments or institutions, purchased from commercial suppliers or imported from older systems. You don’t always have to start from scratch, as many academics already have treasure troves of questions that can be adapted or imported.

Once you have the questions you wish to pose, your next step will be setting up the quiz that will be used to deliver the questions. This annotated pdf of typical Moodle exam settings walks you through the various quiz settings (many of which are set to the optimum setting by default). Your Faculty Online Course Developer will be able to help out here, and also assist with the important job of testing the quiz or exam.

By this point you’ll have a working, thoroughly tested Moodle quiz that you could use for a summative assessment. As a member of staff you’ll have gone through a process of familiarisation. It’s important that you allow your students the same familiarisation with the online exam process (what to expect on exam day, how the software works and so on), not to mention any administrative staff and moderators who will be involved. It’s advisable to schedule some mock exam sessions well in advance of your first exam so your students are fully prepared when it comes to the real thing. Although it’s by no means compulsory, Safe Exam Browser (SEB) can be leveraged here. SEB is a web browser, available on all student PCs, which locks students down to a single Moodle quiz and prevents them from accessing other web sites or resources. SEB will help you keep an eye on large groups of students and be certain they are concentrating on the task at hand. Take a look at this Safe Exam Browser FAQs if it’s something you might be interested in. DCQE also have a set of 30 Chromebooks which can be locked down into exam mode potentially turning any wifi enabled room into an exam room. More information along with the Chromebook booking form can be found here.

Hopefully this blog post has sparked your enthusiasm for giving online exams a go. The keys to success are (i) getting in touch with your faculty online course developer who can help you at various points along the way, and (ii) starting with non-critical familiarisation exercises which give room for finding the edges of online assessment. It’s fair to say that you will have to dedicate a bit of time to start with creating quiz questions, but the downstream benefits of online assessment can be significant.

Some useful resources

eAssessment at the University of Portsmouth

Quiz support materials for staff

Quiz questions examples and templates

DigiExam

Image credits: https://pixabay.com/p-1828268/?no_redirect

Speech bubbles with question inside

Did you know? – Self Service Forms

April 20, 2017 / / 0 Comments

We often receive numerous emails containing the questions above in the TEL department. After a few emails back and forth, it is only when we are finally given all the information required, can we complete the request. To make this process easier for both parties, we have collaborated with IS to create some forms for you to complete.

The Moodle Request forms are now available for all staff to use on the Self Service portal  (https://servicedesk.port.ac.uk/sw/selfservice/portal.php#home). These forms are in the same format as other forms in the portal. Those of you who have used the forms before will know, they are easy to follow.

To use these forms, go to your Self Service Portal, click on ‘Sign In’, then click on the ‘Log a Service Request’. You can click either the large square box or the smaller tab under the Home tab, on the left-hand side.

self service portal dashboard

Once on the next page scroll down to the ‘Your Services’ block, where you will see the ‘Moodle Request’ icon.  When you click on the icon, it will take you to the ‘Service Details’ (Moodle Request) section. Here you’ll see three options to choose from:

  • Add staff to a unitmoodle request icon
  • Creating an account for an external person
  • Create a new unit

Here is the block you will see:

moodle request screen

Click on the option you require and complete the necessary information.

Here is an example of how to give a member of staff access to a unit in Moodle:

grant staff access screen

Click on the circle next to ‘Grant staff access to a Moodle unit’ then click on the ‘Next’ button, this will take you to the next part of the form.  Information required to complete these boxes are: (1) unit code or the URL, (2) the person’s full name (as you start to type, the box will offer you names – if you see the person you want, click on them) or username and (3) the level of access required. To help you, there is a drop down arrow on the right hand side so you can choose one of the five roles.

staff access to moodle unit

If you’re happy with the information you have supplied click the ‘Submit’ button. If not, you can always click the ‘Back’ button to go back to the previous page. Once the form has been submitted, the next screen to appear will give you a reference number, at the same time an email will appear in your email box confirming the details you have requested.

moodle request email

If you then click on the ‘Home’ button on Self Service Portal, you will see that your request is the first reference in the ‘Recent Request’ section.

What happens next

Service Desk will assign your query to the DCQE Group who will email you back confirming your request has been actioned.

The other two forms follow the same pattern, simple and easy to complete. Should you have problems understanding the questions there is a help section.
When you click on the here link, a new page will appear explaining the questions in more depth.

Another important feature of these forms are that the questions marked with asterisks ✱ are mandatory and must be complete otherwise the form will not let you move on.  Should you miss one of these answers, a box will appear asking you to check your answers and try again, just click on the ‘OK’ button and you will be taken to the box that has not been completed. Add the information required then click ‘Next’ or ‘Submit’.

Please Note: This system has been superseded, IS now use a system called Service Manager.  The links on this blog no longer work.  Please see the blog ‘Using Service Desk for your TEL Queries‘ for updated links.

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