A Learning Analytics-informed Activity to Improve Student Performance in a First Year Physiology Course

Learning Analytics (LA) can be employed to identify course-specific factors that hinder student course (outcome) performance, which can be subsequently rectified using targeted interventions. Supplementing interventions with predictive modelling also permits the identification of students who are at-risk of failing the course and encourages their participation. LA findings suggested that a targeted intervention for our course should focus on improving student short answer question (SAQ) performance, which we attempted to achieve by improving their understanding of features pertaining to various SAQ answer standards and how to achieve them using examples of varying scores. Every student was invited to the intervention via a course-wide announcement through the course learning management system. At-risk students identified using predictive models were given an additional invitation in the form of a personalised email. Results suggest that intervention improved student understanding of SAQ performance criteria. The intervention also enhanced student end-of-semester SAQ performance by 12% and 11% for at-risk and no-risk students respectively. Course failure rate was also lower by 26% and 9% among at-risk and no-risk intervention participants. Student perception of the intervention was also positive where an overwhelming majority of participants (96%) found the interventional activity to be useful for their learning and exam preparations.

Determinants of grader agreement: an analysis of multiple short answer corpora

The ’short answer’ question format is a widely used tool in educational assessment, in which students write one to three sentences in response to an open question. The answers are subsequently rated by expert graders. The agreement between these graders is crucial for reliable analysis, both in terms of educational strategies and in terms of developing automatic models for short answer grading (SAG), an active research topic in NLP. This makes it important to understand the properties that influence grader agreement (such as question difficulty, answer length, and answer correctness). However, the twin challenges towards such an understanding are the wide range of SAG corpora in use (which differ along a number of dimensions) and the hierarchical structure of potentially relevant properties (which can be located at the corpus, answer, or question levels). This article uses generalized mixed effects models to analyze the effect of various such properties on grader agreement in six major SAG corpora for two main assessment tasks (language and content assessment). Overall, we find broad agreement among corpora, with a number of properties behaving similarly across corpora (e.g., shorter answers and correct answers are easier to grade). Some properties show more corpus-specific behavior (e.g., the question difficulty level), and some corpora are more in line with general tendencies than others. In sum, we obtain a nuanced picture of how the major short answer grading corpora are similar and dissimilar from which we derive suggestions for corpus development and analysis.

Virtual Classrooms during the Covid-19 pandemic

In order to contain the virus, lockdown was imposed and as a consequence, education delivery methods have changed drastically, with e-learning progressively identifiable, and teaching being carried out with the help of digital platforms.Teachers are struggling with Zoom and Google classrooms to teach students. The conventional style of lectures is deemed incompetent and has been criticized for its inadequacy in involving students, now the focus has been diverted on more innovative pedagogical methods, such as group training, peer interaction and integrated or 'flipped' learning. These practices can continue on-line and can help to develop and expand the interest of students. Multiple IT tools can now be incorporated as a teaching strategy so that Professors and teachers, rather than emphasizing on the classical lecture format, can bring innovation and interactivity to their teaching.One of a very basic and interesting tool is Interactive Video. It allows teachers to enable students to practice questions and discussions while watching videos, by marking signs at specific moments during that video. Mostly the topics are previously taught so it`s easy for a student to understand the lesson. Students can even return back and watch the same video again, in order to develop thorough understanding of a topic. The performance of each student can be evaluated and this approach keeps track of their problems and the topics which are harder to understand. The students stay motivated as the feedback is instant and timely. May educators take Quizzes as standard in classrooms, This learning format develops variety of discussion and suggestions.Apps like Kahoot, Socrative, Quizlet can result in effective classroom engagement. These apps when assigned, allow teachers to test understanding of students simultaneously. Quizzes may be in the form of open-ended short questionnaires, short answer question, true-false, or multiple choice questions. When the quiz is created by the educator and displayed, students can either use their laptops, computers or phones to respond. This is a synchronous type of interaction, where the teachers screen is displaying the questions, and students have to reply through their own devices.It is difficult to engage students during online classes and this issue need to be resolved. If such an approach is adopted which highlight students perspective into consideration rather than trying to accomplish a fake on-campus experience online. Novel methods to teach using digital technology compliments the teaching system and adds creativity. The concept of virtual classroom is potentially off-putting and unfamiliar for new students, studying online for the first time. There are multiple factors influencing the engagement and involvement of students in online system of teaching: it includes family of students due to which students are distracted and focus less during online sessions, additionally, there may be lack of proper technical facilities i.e they may either have no digital facility or older and slower versions which make it difficult for students to understand during the online classes.

Teachers’ Opinion about Pharmacology Written Question Papers of MBBS Professional Examinations

Written examination is an important method for juddering the learning of medical students. Short Answer Questions (SAQ) and multiple choice questions (MCQ) are introduced in MBBS curriculum to assess student cognitive domain. This cross sectional descriptive study was conducted to get the teachers’ opinion about Pharmacology professional written short answer question papers of different Universities of Bangladesh. For this purpose, opinion of total 56 purposively selected teachers of the Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics of 20 Medical Colleges were collected through self-administered semi-structured questionnaire. Most of the teachers (66% & 61%) were in favour of existing distribution of different types of question in curriculum (recall-60%, understanding -30% and problem based-10%) for short answer question paper (SAQ). Majority of the teachers (66% & 54%) were satisfied with the present coverage of recall and understanding type questions respectively but only 41% teachers were satisfied with the coverage of problem based type questions. Seventy-seven percent teachers were satisfied with content coverage in SAQ papers. Eighty-seven percent teachers were satisfied with present marking scheme on SAQ paper. Findings of this study may be used to redefine the distribution of different types question in SAQ papers and to improve the quality of question papers by ensuring their coverage. Bangladesh Journal of Medical Education Vol.12(1) 2021: 40-49

How to assess? Perceptions and preferences of undergraduate medical students concerning traditional assessment methods

Background Medical students’ perception of traditional assessments have an important impact on their approaches to learning. Even though these assessment formats such as Multiple-Choice Question (MCQ), Short Answer Question (SAQ) or oral examinations, are frequently used in medical curricula, only little is known about student’s perceptions of these assessments. The objective of this study was to assess perceptions and preferences of undergraduate medical students concerning traditional assessment formats. Methods The study was conducted at the Medical University of Vienna. Attitudes of 2nd year undergraduate medical students towards traditional assessment formats, and their relation to students’ learning, and students’ attitude towards objectivity, was inquired using a self-developed questionnaire. Results 459 students participated in this study. MCQs examinations were the most preferred assessment format and were chosen as the most objective format. Most students agreed that oral examinations are more appropriate for achieving long-term knowledge. Female students showed higher preference for oral examinations than male students. Students would prefer an assessment mix of 41.8% MCQs, 24.0% oral examinations, and 9.5% SAQs, if they were free to choose the assessment tools. Conclusion Students prefer MCQ format over SAQs/oral examinations. Students’ subjective perception of the importance of gaining long-term knowledge through an assessment has no influence on their assessment preference.

Analisis Deskriptif Soal Ujian Nasional dan Cambridge Checkpoint Pelajaran Matematika Tingkat Sekolah Menengah Pertama Tahun Ajaran 2014/2015 Berdasarkan Tipe Penyajian Soal dan Ruang Lingkup Materi

National Examination and Cambridge Checkpoint are the instrument for evaluating the standard competence ofstudent which organized in Secondary Level. National Examination’s questions based on the National Curriculum ofIndonesia but Cambridge Checkpoint’s questions taken based on Cambridge Curriculum. The aims of this researchis analyzing the type of each question and distribution of each strands in the National Mathematics Examination 2015and Mathematics of Cambridge Checkpoint for Secondary Level 2015. This type of research is a descriptive studywith a qualitative approach. National Mathematics Examination 2015 has one paper only but Mathematics ofCambridge Checkpoint for Secondary Level 2015 has 2 papers for the test. It can be concluded that all question’stype of the National Mathematics Examination for Secondary Level 2015 are multiple choice questions. OnMathematics of Cambridge Checkpoint for Secondary Level 2015, there are various types of questions which consistof 11,43% short-answer question; 68,57% analysis question; 8,57% completing question; and 11,43% match questionfor paper 1, but 22,22% short-answer question; 58,33% analysis question; 11,11% completing question; 2,78% matchquestion; 2,78% multiple choice question; and 2,78% yes/no question for paper 2. Based on strands analyzing result,It can be determined that National Mathematics Examination for Secondary Level 2015 contain of 22,25% number;27,5 algebra; 40% geometry and measurement; 10% statistic and probability. On Mathematics of CambridgeCheckpoint for Secondary Level 2015, It can be explained that 45,72% number; 20% algebra; 17,14% geometry andmeasurement; and 17,14% statistic and probability for paper 1, and 33,33% number; 19,45% algebra; 25% geometryand measurement; and 22,22% statistic and probability for paper 2.

The Analysis of Reading Exercise in English Textbook Entitled Pathway to English for The SENIOR High School Grade X

This study is aimed to analyze the types of Reading Exercises on the English textbook used by the first year students of SMA SWASTA METHODIST 7 Medan. The objective of the study is to find out the types of reading exercises on English textbook used by the first year students of SMA SWASTA METHODIST 7 Medan. The design of the study is descriptive qualitative research. The qualitative data were obtained by the steps that mentioned in the procedure of the research, i.e. reading, identification, classification and simplification. The researcher analyzed the exercise in three steps,identifying the topic, clutser the topic, draw explanation. The object of the study is the reading exercises created by Th. M. Sudarwati and Eudia Grace entitled by Pathway To English and published by Erlangga, 2017. The data was collected only by taking documentary analysis. It means that the writer document reading exercises on students� English textbook and analyzed its types of reading exercises. The final result of this study shows that are five types of reading exercises on the English textbook they are Types of reading exercise are Matching Test, True/ False Reading Test, Multiple Choice item test, Completion item tests, and Long and Short answer questions. The result of reading exercise analysis shows that there are controlled exercise and guided exercise. In controlled exercises the researcher didn�t find exercise in Pathway to English textbook. And in guided exercises there are find in multiple choice in vocabulary 2 exercise. Matching cued word matching 3 exercise, matching picture cued sentence 1 exercise, vocabulary matching 5 exercise, matching selected response fill in vocabulary 7 exercise. True or false 3 exercise, completion item in the following of text 1 exercise, completion are in the text itself 9 exercise. In short answer question 6 exercise, long answer question 8 exercise. But, the researcher didn�t find exercise in multiple choice contextualized vocabulary / grammar and multiple choice vocabulary / grammar.

Reliability and validity of short answer questions in Pharmacology

Background: Short answer question (SAQ) is an excellent tool for assessment. Objective of this study was to understand the practices adopted in answering SAQ, assessment of reliability and validity of SAQ and faculty feedback on valuing SAQs.Methods: A cross-sectional study was done in the Department of Pharmacology of a Government Medical College in Central Kerala from December 2018-January 2019. The study participants were given 10 minutes to answer the two chosen SAQs after which the response sheets were collected and valued by 2 independent examiners. Feedback on correction of the same questions was sought from Pharmacology faculties of various Medical Colleges through online survey. The data were analysed using SPSS software.Results: 100% participants attempted to answer the SAQ ‘Definition of a drug’ but none of them came out with the World Health Organisation definition of drug. For the second SAQ, ‘Two uses of atropine’ around 25(20.8%) participants had written two uses of the drug correctly. The reliability was 0 for ‘definition of a drug’ and 0. 50 (95% CI 0.082-0.702) for ‘Two uses of atropine’ and both the questions had no validity. The feedback on valuing definition and two use of atropine was variable.Conclusions: None of the students wrote definition of a drug correctly and majority gave multiple responses to uses of atropine instead of two valid responses. The short answer questions we tested were found to have moderate to no reliability and no validity. The faculties had variable perceptions in valuing the two short answer questions.

The practice of authentic assessment in an EFL speaking classroom

The implementation of Curriculum 2013 has inserted the authentic assessment as the measurement method to evaluate students’ learning objectives and achievements in the classroom. In this curriculum, the application of authentic assessment requires teachers to evaluate students’ in three competencies: attitude, knowledge, and skill. Most teachers claim that speaking is the most difficult skill to be assessed by using the authentic assessment, considering the complex features of the assessment. This research was aimed at describing the application of authentic assessment in a speaking classroom which relates to the types of the assessment and the scoring rubric. The subjects of the study were an English teacher and 28 students of a class at one of the junior high schools in Banda Aceh. Under the descriptive qualitative approach umbrella, the data in this study was obtained from observation and document analysis. The results of the study revealed that the teacher used several types of activities to assess students’ speaking skills: (1) attitude assessment (teacher observation), (2) knowledge assessment (teacher interview/short answer question), and (3) skill assessment (narrating sequences). The result of this study indicates that authentic assessment is a feasible way to assess students’ speaking skill and it should be employed in assessing other skills as well for learning languages.