One of the most amazing things about Moodle (our online content manager) that I'm really getting into this year is the ability to create quizzes that are (mostly) graded by the computer. Using Moodle I can make quizzes that have all of the multiple choice, true/false, matching, and short answers automatically graded by the program. I then only need to grade essay questions or other questions that require a more complicated response. This is a lifesaver for me because one of the things that I really hate to do is grade the very repetitive and mostly mindless grading that those types of questions require. (Of course, I also believe in using projects, presentations, and other sorts of products for summative assessment. In fact, I find them to be quite fun, interesting, and useful. But, I do believe there is value in more traditional forms of assessment such as quizzes.)
Not only does it make my job more enjoyable, but it gives students instant feedback on how they did on the quiz. They don't have to wait even a day to know. They can find out right away! Now there's feedback for you. Also, I have the option to give them multiple tries to improve their score. Each time they take the quiz the question and answer order is shuffled so it won't look exactly the same as before. This is fantastic because then both they and I can see not only what they need to improve upon, but also exactly what they have improved. I think it's very rewarding to see students say, "Oh, now I get it! That's what that was about!" Plus, I can easily create practice quizzes that they can do as many times as they like so they will know that they are prepared when they do the real thing.
Another fantastic aspect of it is that I can compare how all of my students did on each question without having to flip through a whole bunch of papers. It makes it much easier to see if there are particular questions that a good number of students are (or aren't) understanding, and I can modify my teaching to address that in the future. Moodle does a great job of letting me know how students are doing in essentially real time.
Also, once I get a class set of headsets I will be able to record my voice that students will then be required to respond to. You can even have them record their own voices as the response! It is definitely a time consuming process to get everything going, but I think it well really be helpful for both me and my students in the future.
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