Bethany C. Johnson and Marc T. Kiviniemi 1studied the effect of online chapter quizzes on exam performance in anundergraduate social psychology course. The participants were all undergraduatestudents in a social psychology course.
They found that performances ofstudents were better when the topics of those questions were covered in theformative quizzes. They also examined the correlation between quiz completionand exam performance. They found that as the number of the quizzes completedincreased, the students’ average marks on three exams also increased. JohnL. Dobson 2 also studied the use of formative online quizzes toenhance class preparation and scores on summative exams.
He found that theonline quizzes did result in improvements in exam scores and learning. He alsoconcluded that online quizzes were valid predictors of summative assessmentperformance of his students. Anotherstudied I looked into is from J. W. Gikandi, D.
Morrow, N. E. Davis 3. They did a literature review on the nature of online formative assessment. Theyaddressed fundamental issues of assessments in an online setting.
These issuesare validity, reliability and dishonesty. However, J. W.
Gikandi et al. recommend online formativeassessments as a good teaching tool because these online assessments havepotential to engage both learners and teachers in meaningful educationalpurposes. These online assessments provide pedagogical strategy that builds afoundation for shifting the assessment culture in techniques that supportdiverse learning needs and foster fair and impartial education.
They offeronline learners opportunities for improved interactivity and formativefeedback. J. W.
Gikandi et al. concluded that implications for practice are clearly emerging, in particular, educators need to appreciate and emphasize the merit of embedding assessmentwithin learning processes. Thus, based on the reading I have done, I decided that building these quizzing sitesis the best way forward in designing worthwhile teaching tools.
However, educators can only ask a finite number of questions at any given session. So, the probability that the educator might overlook some questions that are usefulis high. In order to overcome this issue, I decided to then design two quizzingsites, Django Quiz App, and Flask Quiz App. Theprogramming I decided to use is Python 4.
This is because the language itself is modest, requiring little investment oftime or effort to build applications on when compared with Java or C#. The Pythonsyntax is designed to be readable and straightforward which makes it an ideal languageto teach, and allows people who are not used to programming to grasp it withease. This enables coders to spend more time thinking about the problem they’retrying to solve, rather than trying to understand the language’s nomenclature.
Python is broadly used and supported. Pythonruns on every major operating system. Many major libraries and API-poweredservices have Python bindings or wrappers, allowing Python to interface freelywith those services or make direct use of those libraries. Python may not befast in performance, but it makes up for it in durability.
I wastaught Java throughout my master’s programme. I initially intended it instead, however after reading on the different frameworks available in Python, Ichanged my mind.
