Below you see a student grade report for a quiz that I gave early in the year on Earth Science Concepts. After the picture, I will describe what it tells me as a teacher.
The first column of this table shows me the amount of time that each student spent on the quiz. This allows me to see which students are fast and slow. If someone had a superfast time (say 1 minute), I would know that the student either cheated or randomly guessed. The student in this example that took only 9 minutes seems to have rushed.
This time info also allows me to see if I set my time restriction correctly. I had set a 35 minute limit for this quiz. Most students finished in plenty of time. I did have two students that took most of the time - one at 34 minutes 9 seconds and the other at 31 minutes 20 seconds. This tells me that the time I allowed for my quiz was about right. I may shorten the time limit to 30 minutes next year. This would rush a few students, but it would give most students time to answer and make sure that they weren't using their allotted time to look up answers.
The second column shows me the individual grades, and the bottom of the column shows me the class average. The class average here was passing (70.81) but lower than I would have liked. I may have rushed my teaching, but I'll analyze the scores more below when I look at individual items. Certainly it was passable, 2 of the 7 students made Bs.
The remaining columns show student scores and the average number of points achieved on each question. The possible points for each question is shown at the top of the column. For example, on question 2, there were 4.35 points possible and the class average was 4.35. No student missed the question. I am more concerned with the questions where the students did poorly.
Questions 7 had more points available. It was a matching question about layers of the atmosphere. Students averaged about 15 out of 22, they got a about 2/3 of it right. That tells me that they probably new some of the layers and guessed on others. After this quiz, I should have posted a video link to review the layers of an atmosphere. Maybe a video like this one.
However, it is clear to me by looking at the questions that the students had their worst performance on questions 11 and 12. I'll talk about 12 first because I feel I actually understand why they did the worst on this question.
This (the earth science concepts quiz) was the first quiz the students took in the class this year. Question 12 was the only question on the quiz that was open response. Here is an image of the question as the students saw it.
A number of students were intimidated by the question and just didn't try it. Others wrote responses, but the responses were not on topic. They tended to restate the question without giving an explanation. It was clear to me after this quiz that I needed to spend some time explaining to students how to answer open response questions. Specifically, I needed to make sure that they knew the meaning of important terms often used in free response questions - describe, explain, differentiate, etc. Next year, I will be sure to give students examples of how to answer free response questions before their first quiz containing one.
Question 11 was about plate-plate interaction. There were several other questions on this subject and the students did well. I don't know hwy the students did poorly on this one. Here is the question.
My only guess here is that they did not pay attention to the phrase "forced beneath the other". I assume that they read that plates collide and thought it was mountain building.
Moodle then summarizes the grade data in a histogram. What I see here is that it is approximately bell shaped but slightly skewed to the right. The majority of students would need remediation on this subject. Clearly, one student did worse than the others, but the majority of students made 75 or less. I would group these students for remediation before allowing them to go on to the next topic. The students who made Bs could go ahead.
I've already written about one modification that I'd make for all students, teaching them to answer free response style questions before the first quiz. When I actually did this, I did this after the fact, which is what the data suggested I needed to do.
Moodle also has a nice feature that allows for instant general or specific feedback on missed questions. Many students go partial credit on the layers of the atmosphere matching question. In their feedback from the test, I could post a video link going back over the layers of the atmosphere. I mentioned that earlier and even put a link to the video. What I could do though is set up a new module with restricted access just for those low performing students. In addition to the video link, I could put a quiz over the topic and require successful completion before allowing the students to move on. This differentiation would personalize the learning paths for the students.
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