Whatever form of training You are practiced face to face or online training, periodically You need to exercise control of learning. One of the most common control methods is the testing method, which consists in providing the subject of the mission system to effectively measure the level and the structure of its knowledge.
Electronic testing differs from testing performed on paper, thanks to:
- Instant automatic check and assessment tasks (closed-response).
- Automatic statistical analysis of the test and its items.
If the first is equally interesting and inspection and test (in the case of fully independent learning this may be one and the same person), the second is extremely important for a reviewer, more accurately, for the test developer, as it allows to understand how the test is effective and take action for their improvement.
In addition to the control of knowledge using electronic tests can be solved the task of development of a skill, transfer the skill into a skill. For this you can use the test-trainings, involving several attempts to answer the question. In such tests it is possible to give the learner the opportunity to implement a kind of “hidden knowledge”. This is done by adding feedback comments to be displayed after selecting the answer. You can also use a system of penalties for every additional attempt (a deduction from the final grade).
Today, there are many tools in the development of electronic tests. This functionality lies in the author’s tools (Articulate Storyline, iSpring Suite, etc.), and directly to the learning management system (Moodle, eFront, the eLearning 4g, etc.).
Using Moodle to organize e-test, You get a really powerful tool for creating tests, along with a good quality analyzer and test its components — test tasks. Hardly the scope of this article may be enough to describe all possibilities of system testing in Moodle, so we will try to give only a brief overview.
Management of test questions in Moodle is via a “Bank of questions”. If You (perhaps with colleagues) create a course or set of courses in Moodle, then surely there will be tests, and, most likely, there will be many. Tests can solve the problem of input control, current, final control, or it could be the test equipment. At the same time, test questions may be common for some tests, and randomly selected from some set of questions — both of these conditions can be implemented through the “Bank of questions”. In addition, using the “question Bank” easily collaborate on the creation of test questions and quickly find the right question to the test.
Stock build of Moodle includes the ability to create the following types of test questions:
- selection of one/more of several;
- true/not true;
- short open answer (or “question”);
- numeric answer;
- calculated (by the formula) answer;
- the establishment of compliance;
- essay (manually checked);
- nested responses (combined).
A lot of plugins for Moodle questions allow you to implement the drag & drop area selection on the image, open issues with the validation mechanism that uses a regular expression, and other types of questions.
When developing a test in Moodle, you must know the following basic capabilities:
- the test can be limited in time and number of attempts of passing through it;
- day and time of availability of the test can be hardcoded, or the test can always be opened;
- the order of presentation of questions in the test and answers to the questions can be specified, and random;
The test can be run in different modes, for example, in adaptive mode the test an unlimited number of attempts to answer each of the questions of the test (assuming use of the tips), while for incorrect answers may be awarded penalty points which are deducted from the final grade for passing the test.
The final score for the test is the sum of the points earned for each test question, including the weight issue. The rating is expressed as a percentage (the proportion of points from the maximum possible).
After you develop the test, be sure to check his work to make possible adjustments in test settings and in the content of the questions before the test will be performed by examinees. After all the preliminary work completed, the test can be open.