The e-Multiple Choice item as a Reflective Tool

Today we completed our group presentation for this course. My team's presentation is available here. I was prompted to reflect by an observation made by our course coordinator Dr. Marshall-Stuart. A discussion about how a multiple choice item could be used as a reflective tool ensued and I suggested that if a gamification tool like Kahoot or a well designed Moodle quiz is used that these can make for good reflective tools by students and teachers in action and on action. In this post I will develop this point more, provide clear examples and support my thesis with reference to the literature.

A skillfully constructed multiple choice item is akin to an onion. As students attempt to select the correct response they must be pushed to draw upon their mastery of two or more understandings. Then after peeling back these layers of the onion they must make connections between them to arrive at the correct answer.  When an assessment item like this is used it calls for thinking at the higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy. I will demonstrate this with an example.

The question  below is taken from Cambridge International Examinations (CIE)

                                Figure 1 (CIE, IGCSE- Past Exam Question) 

To arrive at a successful response the student must use a knowledge of the pH scale AND relate it to safety. In addition to that the question sets a real world context.

Imagine that this question is nestled in the Moodle LMS as a quiz and a student attempting the quiz selects D. This is an incorrect response but instead of including a pop up box that says sorry try again, the discerning educator would include feedback as follows:

This is very alkaline and while it would neutralize the acid it might not be the best choice. remember oven cleaners are powerful and made to clean sticky left-over materials. 

 Quizzes in the Moodle LMS allow for second attempts so if this is allowed then the student can go on to select A which is the correct response. Figure 2 below provides some detail about how this tool functions and it is extracted from my work in the laboratory course.

                                                                         Figure 2

                    

At the end of the quiz the teacher will receive feedback on scores and this will be broken up to show the choices made by students. If the majority of students select B and then this demonstrates the need to go back to a lesson on the meaning of the pH scale.

  This example shows reflection in action by students with teacher scaffolding and then reflection on action by the teacher and its all made more powerful because of the digital tools. Nicol (2007) lends strong support to the use of 'E-assessment by design' and makes reference to an approach to learning based on the use of electronic voting systems (EVS) which in modern terminology refers to learning games like Kahoot. Here a poll of student responses is used as an opportunity for peer-peer interaction as facilitators allow students to convince their peers about the validity of a particular choice and if the questions are well constructed then deep reflection would follow.

Next Steps
In light of the current  shift to online learning tools like these are of even greater significance. I am currently making a 15 question multiple choice quiz on moodle to use next week with my students as an online assessment and as I construct the questions I am using my knowledge of common student misconceptions to create meaningful feedback. This is a very tedious process and it must be seen as a work in progress because there will be more room for reflection and corrective action on the part of the teacher once the results are analyzed.

                                                                REFERENCES

Cambridge International Examinations (2016) https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/programmes-
              and-qualifications/cambridge-igcse-chemistry-0620/past-papers/

David Nicol (2007) E‐assessment by design: using multiple‐choice tests to good effect, Journal of 
              Further and Higher Education, 31:1, 53-64, DOI: 10.1080/03098770601167922