Our experience with LEARN in ELA001-Circuits Felipe Iza, Chin Panagamuwa, Keith Gregory School of Electronic, Electrical and Systems Engineering e-learning showcase Loughborough, 1 st February

P3GP3GP3GP3G P3GP3GP3GP3G Why we turned into LEARN?  “No choice”: Minimum presence  Module card  “Students request” (Student feedback forms) :  Notes, tutorials, reading list,…  No correlation to attendance  “What we wanted”: Formative assessment  Challenge: ~150 students Other options:  LEARN vs Perception

P3GP3GP3GP3G P3GP3GP3GP3G What we wanted  Series of quizzes during the year to …  Get students to study regularly (2% final mark/quiz)  Provide feedback to students  Inform us of student progress  Required features  Open & invigilated time-limited quizzes  Variety of question types (most numerical)  Automatic immediate marking  Automatic immediate feedback for each question  “Randomized” questions (cheating & recycle)

P3GP3GP3GP3G P3GP3GP3GP3G Example “LEARN can do it”: Things to note:  Question types => MC, numerical questions, schematics/graphs  Randomized numbers on questions  Most questions require more than one answer => “Embedded answers / Cloze”  Instant marking and feedback  Positive student response

P3GP3GP3GP3G P3GP3GP3GP3G Learning curve  Learning LEARN  Interface  Quizzes  Questions IT TAKES TIME AND EFFORT BUT…  It has pedagogical value  It has been well received by students.  Most material can be recycled Support available: e-Learning team

P3GP3GP3GP3G P3GP3GP3GP3G A current limitation Q: The double of {x} is _____ A: 2*{x} Q: The double and triple of 3 are _____ and _____ respectively. A: 6,9 Q: The double and triple of {x} are _____ and _____ respectively. A: 2*{x}, 3*{x} LEARN Randomized question with 1 answer (“calculated”) Question with multiple answers (“Cloze”) Randomized question with multiple answers (“NA”)

P3GP3GP3GP3G P3GP3GP3GP3G Workaround  Create an “Embedded Answers / Cloze” question that will be used as template  Export the question as Moodle xml  Run a custom written program that uses the exported question as a template to create a given number of randomized variations  Import the randomized questions into LEARN

P3GP3GP3GP3G P3GP3GP3GP3G Workaround (contd): template example ##a=1:10 ##b=1:10 ##B=1:10 ##phi=-90:15:90 %a+B*cos(phi*pi/180) %b+B*sin(phi*pi/180) %sqrt(a^2+b^2)*B %atan(b/a)*180/pi+phi %sqrt(a^2+b^2)/B %atan(b/a)*180/pi-phi Given the following two phasors A and B: A=\a\+j\b\ B=\B\ |\phi\° What are the results of these phasor operations? A+B={1:NM:=10:0.1}+j{1:NM:=10:0.1} in cartesian coordinates A·B={1:NM:=10:0.1} |{1:NM:=10:0.1}° in polar coordinates A/B={1:NM:=10:0.1} |{1:NM:=10:0.1}° in polar coordinates ## Input parameters % Answers in order of appearance Header Question

P3GP3GP3GP3G P3GP3GP3GP3G Logistics  Capacity of computer labs:  For ~150 students: labs across campus  Timetabling  Invigilators  DANS  Extra time: Define groups Duplicate quiz and change time limit  Individual rooms

P3GP3GP3GP3G P3GP3GP3GP3G Conclusions  Pedagogical side of things…  Enables formative/summative assessment of large group of students  Enables prompt feedback to large group of students  Effective and well-received by students  Practical side of things…  It can be very time consuming to set up…  Mind the logistics particularly with large groups and don’t forget DANS students  One would expect things to improve as LEARN is further developed and adopted by more academics.