Prácticas Eficaces en los Exámenes

Nota del traductor: Esta es una traducción reciente, muy apegada al Español de México; si Usted preferiría ver la traducción antigua, apegada al Español internacional vaya a Prácticas Eficaces en los Cuestionarios

Como hemos visto, el motor para exámenes de Moodle es una herramienta potente y flexible para monitorear y diagnosticar el desempeño del estudiante con ciertos tipos de conocimiento. Al usar efectivamente esta herramiente puede aumentar la efectividad de su curso, y promover el desempeño del alumno. Mientras que un examen calificado por computadora tiene un desempeño diferente que las evaluaciones más abiertas, si da una ventana valiosa sobre el pensamiento del estudiante, especialmente cuando Usted usa buenas estrategias, y un poco de creatividad.

Estrategias de examen

Desde luego, el usar el motor del examen eficientemente requiere trabajo y paciencia. Lo primero que debe hacerse es usar estrategias eficientes para el diseño de preguntas. Si Usted hace buenas preguntas Usted obtendrá datos útiles acerca del desempeño de sus estudiantes y su comprensión del material. desde luego, lo contrario también es cierto. Hay una tonelada de literatura disponible acerca del diseño eficiente de evaluaciones. Yo solamente resaltaré unas cuantas de las ideas más importantes.

• Ligue cada pregunta a un objetivo del curso. Después de todo, Usted quiere saber si es que sus estudiantes están cumpliendo los objetivos del curso, ¿porqué no se los pregunta directamente?
• Trate de hacer varias preguntas acerca de cada idea importante en la clase. Esto le dará a Usted más puntos de datos acerca de la comprensión de los estudiantes
• Al escribir una pregunta de opción múltiple, asegúrese de que cada respuesta equivocada represente una idea equivocada común. Esto le ayudará a Usted a diagnosticar el pensamiento de sus estudiantes y eliminar las respuestas fáciles de adivinar.
• Escriba preguntas que requieran que el estudiante piense en diferentes niveles. Incluya algunas preguntas de memorización, algunas preguntas de comprensión y algunas preguntas de aplicación y análisis. Usted puede determinar en donde están teniendo problemas los estudiantes en su pensamiento. ¿Será que pueden recordar el material pero no pueden aplicarlo?
• Pruebe sus preguntas. Después de que Usted haya establecido un Banco de preguntas inicial, use los reportes del sistema para determinar cuales preguntas son útiles y cuale sno lo son. Conforme Usted escriba nuevas preguntas, deles un valor de puntaje bajo y ponga algunas de ellas en exámenes para establecer su confiabilidad.

Una vez que Usted tenga varios bancos de preguntas de prueba bien escritas, asegúrese de usar los Reportes de examen y las estadísticas para monitorear el desempeño de sus alumnos. Los reportes detallados ylas estadísticas disponibles a Usted son herramientas valiosas para comprender la comprensión del material por los estudiantes.

Usos creativos del examen

With the Moodle quiz engine, it’s easier to utilize educationally sound assessment strategies which would be too difficult to implement with paper and pencil. Most people think of tests as an infrequent, high-stakes activity, like mid-terms and finals. Better strategies involve frequent, low-stakes assessments you and your students can use to guide their performance during the course of the semester.

Creating a series of small mini-tests gives you a very flexible system for gauging performance and keeping students engaged in the class. Here are a few ideas for quick quizzes you can use as part of a larger assessment strategy.

Revisión del capítulo

Getting students to complete reading assignments has to be one of the hardest motivational tasks in education. Reading is critical to understanding most material, and fundamental to success in many classes. The problem for most students is there is no immediate reward or punishment for procrastinating on a reading assignment. If you haven’t done the reading for a class discussion, you can either keep quiet, or, as I used to do occasionally, wing it by skimming in class. If you have a lecture course, there’s almost no need to do the reading as the lecturer usually covers most of the material in class anyway.

Creating a little mini-test for each reading assignment solves a number of problems. First, it encourages students to do the reading so they can do well on the quiz. Second, it gives the students feedback on how well they understood the reading assignment. Third, it gives you data about what aspects of the reading students found confusing, and which they have already mastered so you can focus your class activities.

For a reading mini-test, I would recommend setting a limited time quiz students can only take once. Because it’s a low-stakes activity you want students to use for self-assessment, I would also display feedback and correct answers. If you’re concerned about students sharing answers after they’ve taken the quiz, randomize the question and answer order. If you have a test bank, make some of the questions random as well. As an additional assignment, students should write down one question about a question they got wrong, and bring it to class.

Práctica del examen

The key to effective practice is to have a realistic practice environment. Many students worry about tests, especially high-stakes tests, because they have no idea what to expect. What question format will you use? How detailed will the questions be? What should they study?

You can help alleviate test anxiety by creating a practice test students can take to help answer these questions. These tests are usually based on old questions similar to the current test questions. Use last year's final as an example test, which will force you into the practice of writing new questions every year. This is a good idea anyway, as you can be sure someone has a copy of last year’s test they are sharing with others.

To set up a practice test, I’d create a zero point test with questions from the year before in random order with random answers. I would also allow students to take the test as many times as they’d like so they can test themselves as much as they need. Display feedback, but not correct answers so it presents more of a challenge.

Reunir datos

As an expert, you know a lot about your field. Your challenge as a teacher is to translate your knowledge for a novice who doesn’t share your conceptual structure or experience. An example or lecture you think is brilliant may leave your students completely confused. It can be hard to tell what students really understand and what’s leaving them baffled.

A data-gathering quiz is similar to a chapter check, but it takes place after a class meeting or lecture. Your goal is to quickly get some feedback on student understanding of a lecture. What did they really understand? What do you need to spend more time on? I’ve found many instructors have trouble gauging what students find difficult, and what the students find so easy they are bored.

Setting up a post-class data-gathering quiz is similar to creating a chapter check. Set the quiz for a limited time, like a day or two before the next meeting. Allow them to take it once and display feedback and correct answers.

Seguridad y trampas en el examen

Por supuesto, los exámenes en línea tambien presentan otra oportunidad para los tramposos en el salor que tratan de ganarle al sistema. LA mayoría de los exámenes en línea están hechos para tomarse en casa, o al menos, realizarse fuera de clase. Los estudiantes pueden descargar las preguntas e imprimirlas. Pueden resolver el examen en compañía de otros estudiantes, o cuando están leyendo los libros de texto.

Afortunadamente, USted puede contrarestar muchas de estas estrategias, haciéndoles más complicado el hacer trampa d elo que les representa ventaja. Veamos unas cuantas estrategias para contrarestar la mayoría de los esquemas para hacer tramapa:

Imprimir y compartir preguntas

If you display feedback and correct answers, students can print the results page and share it with their friends. Or they can simply print the questions themselves directly from the quiz. The key to discouraging this behavior is to randomize the question order and the answer order. It makes the printouts a lot less useful. Creating larger question banks and giving tests with random subsets is also an effective strategy. If students can only print a small number of questions at a time, they will need to view the test again and again, then sort the questions to eliminate duplicates.

Advertencia: Assume there will be printed copies of your questions available to students who want them. Most instructors don’t realize students frequently have copies of old paper based tests, and electronic test delivery is another way for students to get copies of the questions. I know one professor who had over 1100 questions in his online test bank. At the end of the semester, he confiscated a printout from a student. It had every question with the correct answer, neatly formatted and divided by textbook chapter. We decided if students wanted to memorize 1100 questions and answers to the level where they could answer a small number of them displayed at random, then they would have learned more than if they had just studied. Of course, we used timed quizzes and other strategies to minimize using the print-out as a reference manual.

Usando el libro de texto

Students will frequently look up the answer to questions in the textbook or a reading. If you are giving a chapter check quiz, then this is what you want them to do. Otherwise, you need to come up with creative ways of making the textbook less directly useful. Timed quizzes are the single most effective tool for eliminating this strategy. A timed quiz requires the students answer the questions in a certain amount of time. If you give enough questions and make the time short enough, they won’t have time to look up all the answers. I usually give about 30 seconds per multiple-choice question. If they answer them faster and have time to look up some answers afterward, I figure they knew enough to deserve to look up an answer or two.

Asking students to apply their knowledge to novel situation can also make a difference. Synthesis and application questions can’t be looked up. Students have to understand the material and apply it creatively to answer the questions. So while they may take the time to review the text, they will still need to try to understand what they’ve read to successfully answer the question.

Trabajando con amigos

If your students are on the same campus, they may get together in a lab and try to take the quiz together. This is an easy strategy to thwart with random question order, random answer order and questions randomly pulled from a test bank. If my screen doesn’t look like yours, then it’s harder for us to quickly answer all of the questions. A timed quiz also makes it harder for the two of us to cheat if we have different questions and we only have a short amount of time to answer.

Haga que alguien más conteste el examen

The old adage goes “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog”, and no one knows who is actually taking the test. Students will sometimes pay classmates, or others who have taken the course in the past, to take online quizzes for them. There are two ways to counter this strategy. One, have an occasional proctored exam where students need to show ID. If they haven’t taken the quizzes or done the work until then, they will do poorly on the proctored exam. To eliminate current classmates from taking each others quizzes, only make them available for a short time. You could require everyone take the test within a 2- or 4-hour block. If the test is properly randomized, it will be very difficult to take it more than once during the testing period. The test taker will worry about their own grade first, then about their employer's grade.

Obviously, there are many strategies students can use to cheat. While it would be naïve to assume there isn’t cheating, the vast majority of your students want to succeed on their own merits. The anonymity of the online environment may open up new avenues for the cheaters, but it’s not really much different from your face-to-face classes. A few people will go to great lengths to cheat, but most will be honest as long as it’s not too easy to get away with it. A few precautions will eliminate most of the easy cheats, and the classic strategies will work for the others.

Exámenes robustos con variantes aleatorias

Esta sección describe una buena forma para ayudarle a minimizar el potencial para hacer trampa, y aumentar la oportunidad para que los estudiantes aprendan de la retroalimentación al hacer intentos repetidos de resolver el examen. La idea básica es tomar cada una de las preguntas en particular que Usted estuviera pensando en hacer y hacer varias pequeñas variantes de la pregunta. Después se usa la característica de preguntas aleatorias de Moodle, para que a cada aestudiante le salga una de las variantes elegidas al azar.

Un ejemplo

A good example of this (although not in Moodle) can be seen at https://students.open.ac.uk/openmark/mu120.m5omdemo/. Take that test once, making a rough note of the questions you are asked. Then after you have done 'End test', do 'Restart entire test' and see that you are asked a different set of questions that have different answers, although they test the same knowledge. This sort of strategy is easier to implement in some subjects than in others.

Como configurar esto en Moodle

Suppose we are going to create a quiz with 6 questions about interpreting diagrams (that is, we are going to try to clone the OpenMark example above). For the fourth question, the closest we will be able to get would be the Image target question type from the Modules and plugins database.

1. Cree una categoría para cada 'pregunta' del examen

As you can see from the screen shot, I have created six appropriately named categories, all neatly grouped inside a parent category. You do this on the 'Categories' tab of the question bank interface.

2. Cree la primera variante de la primera pregunta

Create the first variant of the first question, just like you would create any other Moodle question.

In our example, this might be a Embedded answers (Cloze) question type. The question text might be:

Below is a plan of a proposed garden. The scale is that each division in the plan represents a length in the garden of 0.5 metres. What is the proposed length and width of the Patio in the garden?

The Patio is {CLOZE syntax} metres by {CLOZE syntax} metres.

3. Cree las otras variantes de la primera pregunta

To easily create a variant, click the edit icon next to the first question, make the changes you need to turn it into the second variant, then use the 'Save as new question' button to create the second variant. (Remember to change the question name, or you will get confused.) Repeat this process to create as many variants as you want.

In our example, we might change the word Patio, and the scale factor each division represents 0.5 metres. We would also need to change the answers and the associated feedback in the {CLOZE syntax} bits.

4. Repita 2. y 3.para las demás preguntas

The screen shots show the variants of the third question. This one is a bit more of a pain to set up, because each variant will use a different image of a pie chart, so there is a bit more editing to do, and more files to upload to the course files area.

5. Añada la pregunta al examen

Once you have created all the questions, add them to the quiz using the 'Add random question' feature. Select the first category (Reading a plan variants). Ensure 'Display questions from sub-categories too' is off. Use the controls at the bottom to Add 1 random question to the quiz.

Repeat for each of the other categories in order.

Comentarios

Obviously this is more work to set up (although not three times as much work as creating one quiz). It is up to you to do the cost benefit analysis for your particular quiz. Note that once you have set this up, you are more likely to be able to reuse quizzes in future, because you have reduced the potential for simple copying of answers.

As an alternative to 'Save as new question', you can use Moodle's import and export formats, and copy and paste in your text editor to create variants.

One issue you have to worry about is, are all the variants you have made of each question really equally difficult? Moodle 2.0 will feature a new Statistics report which should help you analyse your quiz results to see how difficult each variant is.

Experience shows that 'a few variants' can normally be taken to be 3 variants. This is enough to ensure that two students working at neighbouring computers will mostly get different questions to each other. More is better (providing you can ensure equal difficulty) but is more work, so you get diminishing returns.

(This section expands some of the advice above under Printing and sharing questions. It also describes how most online assessments at the Open University are constructed. The calculated question type is sometimes another way to implement quizzes like this.)

Vea también

• Navegador de examen seguro. El Navegador de Examen Seguro puede trabajar con Moodle para controlar lo que puede hacer un alumno al estar en Moodle. Para usarlo, debe habilitarlo en Configuraciones > Administración del sitio > Desarrollo > Experimental > Configuraciones experimentales. Esto añadirá la opción de 'Requerir Navegador para examen seguro' al campo de 'Seguridad del navegador' en el formato de configuraciones del examen.
• Sugerencias para crear preguntas para examen