For about three years now, Biology professor Harry Roy has used WebCT for his Genetics and Evolution course. For Harry, some of the benefits of using WebCT have been (1) easier test administration and grading; (2) more accurate monitoring of student progress; and (3) an improved ability to measure the effectiveness of the course over time.
Professor Roy makes use of WebCT right from the start. On the first day of class, he employs a WebCT quiz as a pre-test to assess his students' knowledge of the subject. This pre-test does not count toward the student's grade, but it is used to measure the learning gain the students have made during the semester, and in effect also acts as a preview of the final exam or post-test for the course. In short, Harry finds that WebCT's automated test administration and grading has made it much easier for him to implement pre- and post-testing.
Prior to using WebCT in his course, Professor Roy gave his students problem sets as homework during the term. However, he realized that, as students' work on these problem sets was not graded, many students might not do the problem sets. To deal with this, he took advantage of WebCT's potential for automated testing, and created electronic quizzes based on the twenty-two problem sets. This meant that, after working on a problem set, a student could take the related quiz, which was then automatically graded, and immediately find his score on-line. What's more, Harry encouraged his students to call attention to any computer errors they may have encountered in any of the quizzes. This helped ensure the gradual improvement of the database of questions.
Professor Roy believes the outcome of using WebCT in his course has been very positive. He states, "Students can now demonstrate they have done their homework. One would hope that this gives students a feeling of confidence." Another bonus is the fact that he can now use the students' homework test scores, along with WebCT's student and page tracking features, to more accurately monitor student progress.
Harry also likes the flexibility WebCT gives him in designing and grading quizzes. For example, he can assign different values to different answers, giving points for some answers that are partially correct. He can also help students learn from their mistakes by providing valuable feedback on what they got wrong, and what the correct answer is. When evaluating incorrect respsonses, Professor Roy can choose to override WebCT's automated grade, awarding additional points for partially correct answers. This helps increase the students' perception of grading fairness within the course.
Professor Roy also makes use of WebCT's statistics feature to gather statistics about students and quiz questions that would be hard to track and calculate manually. For example, WebCT makes it easy to keep track of how well each quiz question has performed over time, and to compare how students did on different questions.
Harry now gives all of his tests using WebCT. After giving the tests on-line, he collects blue books from the students so that he can evaluate the students' reasoning in more detail if the computer "thinks" they got the answer wrong. If justified, he can then override the computer-assigned grade. This practice is well accepted by most of his students, who appreciate getting the results of their tests within a day of taking the test, complete with partial credit.
To summarize, for Harry, WebCT's quiz tool has made test administration, grading, and monitoring student progress much easier. In addition, it has enabled him to detect changes in the effectiveness in student performance in the same basic course taught at different times.
If you're an instructor who would like more information on how to use WebCT to your best advantage in your course, or have any other WebCT-related questions, please contact Instructional Multimedia Consultant Don Bell by directing electronic mail to belld2@rpi.edu.
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