Exams and quizzes are methods through which to determine the proficiency of the learner. Exams can be written face-to-face (F2F) or online. I have my students in my academic courses complete both F2F and online quizzes. My non-academic classes are project based and do not have any F2F exams, however, they do have online quizzes. Having online auto-graded quizzes provides immediate feedback to the learner and subsequent understanding of information. The online quiz should include questions on the lower end of Bloom’s taxonomy (knowledge and comprehension), allow the learners to write the quiz as many times as they wish, and give the maximum amount of time the learning management system will allow. To help the learner, feedback should be provided for every quiz question. F2F exam questions should include more questions that are at the higher end of Bloom’s taxonomy (evaluation, syntheses and analysis). I suggest that the questions on F2F exams should be in similar format to the assignments that are submitted for marking.
Moving the midterm earlier in the course helps with learners completing online courses. Engle, Mankoff and Carbrey (2015) found that learners were more successful at completing an online course if they had completed the midterm exam. I have found that moving the midterm one unit earlier has increased completion rates in my online high school science classes.
Reference
Engle, Deborah, Mankoff, Chris, and Carbrey, Jennifer. Coursera’s introductory human physiology course: Factors that characterize successful completion of a MOOC. The International Review Of Research In Open And Distributed Learning, 16.2 (2015): Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2010
