[Year 12 IT Apps] Questions to test understanding

Tue Dec 4 17:21:39 EST 2012

Hi Mark and anyone else reading ;)

Love these generous response from you and others. I'm starting to realise that having a list discussion that's open to all is an interesting thing in its own right. I am very used to two way only communication. It's made me think about how do you start a debate that's not just a number of separate conversations?

Anyone else out there in EduList land who would like to contribute a question/comment/knowledge?

Anyway, I'm enjoying the insights into how everyone puts together their exams. It's funny isn't it that so many of us teach IT and yet we will all be writing our own exam/sac questions - lots of duplication or maybe just a chance for us all to be creative?

Thanks again
Liam

PS. There is more to my email below your comments.
From: itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Mark KELLY
Sent: Thursday, 29 November 2012 8:22 PM
To: Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Year 12 IT Apps] Questions to test understanding

G'day Liam.

This topic could become an Edulist topic in its own right.  Writing questions is as much art as science, and usually based on lots of experience of how students typically think and respond.  Perhaps this is why some exam questions written by advanced IT academics who don't actually teach 16-17 year olds occasionally go wrong?
I love how kids respond - can drive me nuts when they respond in an entirely left field way to what I expected. Gradually tightening that up but there will always be scope for that.

I've just finished writing 2 ITA exams and - thinking back - a lot of my writing was based on predicting what an average kid of mine would read and how he/she* would respond. The challenge is to write questions to differentiate between D, C, B, and A+ students fairly, and give each of them a chance to show what they know.
Yes.

I also learn a lot from classic bad questions I've seen in exams: those that are too easy, removed from the study design, vaguely worded, ambiguous, confusing, incorrect in fact.  Some questions are fine, but the suggested answers are the problem: this is a big problem with VCAA exams since you can't complain about an answer after the exams have been marked.

But your average exam will have a very few low-level Bloom taxonomy questions: define this word etc.  One or two, to settle students' nerves at the start of section A and B.   The majority of them, however, should be getting students to apply their knowledge in a given context, and justifying their opinions.
Yes - comes back to Andrew's "runs on the board" comment I think with the low-level questions and then moving on.

And I agree with other posters: you need to abide by exam conventions, but also sometimes break out and challenge kids with unexpected (but fair and relevant) means of assessing their understanding.
Any examples you'ld like to share - these types of questions interest me at the moment. The ones that challenge them but aren't tied up too much into exact recall or semantics.

I keep telling my kids all year: your job is to fill your Bucket O' Knowledge with ITA facts. Your payday comes when you select relevant facts from the bucket and apply them to a question in an exam or outcome.  It's the judgement you get marks for, not the memorization of words and definitions.
:)

Dammit.  This post has already started to become a thesis.  Time to stop.
No. ;)

Good question, though, Liam. It's one I don't usually think about consciously, but it lurks, unuttered in my exam-writing reptilian brain stem.

Mark
--

* (dammit- it's "he" - no girls in my ITA classes since 2008!)

--

On 29 November 2012 17:29, O'Grady, Liam A <o'grady.liam.a at edumail.vic.gov.au<mailto:o'grady.liam.a at edumail.vic.gov.au>> wrote:
Hi Everyone,

What makes a good exam/test question for IT? Do you have any that you would be happy to share?

Recently I was writing my yr 11 exams and trying to improve the questions I had that really give kids a chance to show their understanding of IT. The following questions arose in this process:

1.      How much should questions be about factual recall and how much about how to apply the knowledge?

2.      What is a good question?

3.      How could we write questions that are interesting enough that the kids want to answer them?

4.      How can we write a good question and make it easy to mark? For example, the question below whilst having scope for more detailed answers could also be harder to mark fairly.

One question I came up with is below. This is NOT a model question - just my attempt to get the ball rolling.

Question 7
St Mungo's is a large hospital network with hospitals in all Australian capital cities. All computer servers run from a datacentre in the main hospital in Hobart. These servers contain all the electronic information used by the hospital. This includes patient medical records, billing details, medical operations scheduling, staff details and the ordering system for medical supplies. All other branches connect to the datacentre via a VPN connection through the Internet.

They are thinking about moving to Cloud Computing because it is very expensive running their own datacentre in terms of staff and hardware. A couple of times recently there have been power failures in the datacentre which has meant that none of the hospitals could access the information needed to run.

a)      What would you recommend that they do? Justify your recommendation. (4 Marks)

Cheers
Liam O'Grady
Brunswick Secondary College

Important - This email and any attachments may be confidential. If received in error, please contact us and delete all copies. Before opening or using attachments check them for viruses and defects. Regardless of any loss, damage or consequence, whether caused by the negligence of the sender or not, resulting directly or indirectly from the use of any attached files our liability is limited to resupplying any affected attachments. Any representations or opinions expressed are those of the individual sender, and not necessarily those of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.

_______________________________________________
http://www.edulists.com.au - FAQ, resources, subscribe, unsubscribe
IT Applications Mailing List kindly supported by
http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/studies/infotech/itapplications3-4.html - Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority <br>
http://www.vitta.org.au  - VITTA Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association Inc <br>
http://www.swinburne.edu.au/ict/schools - Swinburne University

--
Mark Kelly - kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au<mailto:kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au>
Manager of ICT, Reporting, IT Learning Area
McKinnon Secondary College, McKinnon Rd, McKinnon 3204, Victoria, Australia
Phone: +613 8520 9085, Fax +613 9578 9253
VCE IT Lecture Notes: http://vceit.com
Moderator: IT Applications Edulist<http://edulists.com.au/itapps/index.htm>
--
My personal best for the 100 metre sprint is 11.9 metres.

Important - This email and any attachments may be confidential. If received in error, please contact us and delete all copies. Before opening or using attachments check them for viruses and defects. Regardless of any loss, damage or consequence, whether caused by the negligence of the sender or not, resulting directly or indirectly from the use of any attached files our liability is limited to resupplying any affected attachments. Any representations or opinions expressed are those of the individual sender, and not necessarily those of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.edulists.com.au/pipermail/itapps/attachments/20121204/5fb5e994/attachment.html 