Improving the quality of questions in online assessment for mathematics

Wednesday
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The Boiler House

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Computer-aided assessment (CAA) plays a significant role in student’s learning experience. Having a good understanding about the pedagogy of designing questions, CAA can go well beyond MQC; it can be used to create a range of sophisticated questions and tests.

But what kind of questions can we have in an online assessment? What features can a good quality CAA have? This talk will try to discuss the required ingredients which construct a question with adequate quality.

The STACK online assessment system was used to create online quizzes for 4 major 1st Year mathematical courses (over 700 questions with random versions). Having revised these questions and analysed the answers of more than 1000 students, we now have a better understanding of creating questions which assess more than routine use of procedures. The final goal is to create a framework for review and quality improvement.