MOODLE QUESTIONNAIRES: APPEALING OR TROUBLESOME TOOL IN

TEACHING/LEARNING GENERAL CHEMISTRY AT UNIVERSITIES?

 Manuel Miró, Montserrat R. Delgado, Antoni Femenia, Joan Perelló, Fernando Tur

Department of Chemistry, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma de

Mallorca, Spain. E-mail: manuel.miro@uib.es

EDULEARN-11, Barcelona, July 4-6

Aims

Investigating the potential of Moodle Questionnaires for compiling a useful virtual database of questions and answers

Application to a General Chemistry course for agriculture engineers

Investigating the potential of Moodle as active platform for formative evaluation and getting knowledge of achievement of students’ expected competences

Assessment of students’ marks as compared with subjects wherein Moodle Questionnaires are not being exploited

Investigating the potential of Moodle as active asynchronous platform for assisting students in the process of learning

Building of Moodle QuestionnairesGENERAL CHEMISTRY

•Chemistry lab and security

•Unit operations in chemistry lab

•Atomic structure and chemical bonding

•Inorganic formulation and stoichiometry

•Organic chemistry

•Thermochemistry, thermodynamics and equilibrium

•Chemical kinetics

•Equilibrium in solution

•Titration in aqueous media

Building of Moodle Questionnaires

Moodle questionnaire is being generated by sweeping exercises from the pool of queries (right hand side) into the

questionnaire screen (left hand side)

Plot of Fitted Model

Final Mark = 0,76719 + 0,703692*Moodle Questionnaire

0 2 4 6 8 10

Moodle Questionnaire

0

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Fin

al M

ark

Moodle marks against final course marks in General Chemistry

The least squares plot with a correlation factor of 0.816 indicates a moderately strong relationship between both marks supported by the goodness-of-fit (p=0.536> 0.05)

Moodle Questionnaires play a significant role in the formative evaluation of students to keep track of their learning progress and expectations of gaining the competences by the end of the course

Moodle Questionnaires

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Students’ average rating (from 0 to 10) of varied learning methodologies involving resolution of exercises/tasks related

to General ChemistrySolving by students

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Solving by educator

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Embedded answers

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ADVANTAGES in using Moodle Questionnaires:

Promote students’ self-learning

Facilitate students’ formative evaluation for ascertainment of competences gained as supported by on-line educator feedback

Guide students to concentrate further efforts in those topics with low marks

Foster educator’s formative evaluation to follow the learning process of each individual student

Assist educator in better scheduling of synchronous activities

PITFALLS in using Moodle Questionnaires:

Fraud in Moodle Questionnaires is fairly easy: We have detected groups of students gathering in computer rooms at UIB to solve together the questionnaire and deliver identical answers

Students are merely interested in marks in lieu of their own learning process

Preparation of random questionnaires (that is, a unique questionnaire per student) is a time consuming task for educators to compile sufficient material

Implementation of figures in the answers of Moodle Questionnaires is rather cumbersome.

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge financial support from the University of the Balearic Islands within the call of innovative projects (2010/2011) aimed at improving the quality of learning processes in Higher Education Institutions.