essay
Can Elearning Solutions Be Applied to The Study of Arts and Letters?
What we can learn is limited by the ambit of our experiences and of the media that we are exposed to. Usually, the best media that creates a deep imprint on us is good Literature. However in order to appreciate good literature, we must in turn have already seen what we have read at work in our own lives, even for just a glimmer of this sight is enough and literature will awaken and deepen that glimmer of insight. But if we have not at all seen any part of ourselves or our lives in the text, then the text will never come to life. And this is applicable to teaching as well. What is taught in any humanities classroom, especially if these things have something to do with the profundity of human experience (I am speaking primarily of literature, philosophy, psychology and the arts) but such human profundity of insight can be seen in every humanities subject such as history or sociology. The difference will always be in the slanted use of discourse to achieve whatever power struggle the teachers wish to establish will only translate well if the students have some concrete idea of what is being taught. Otherwise, they will only be able to memorize facts, if they succeed in that at all since the context will always make the facts easier to remember.
The trouble is that elearning solutions cannot help but remove the teacher from the picture. After all, it is the essence of elearning to be fast, easy, and done at one’s own pace. With a full-time teacher, the pace will have to be managed and if the teacher is any good, he or she will continually challenge the students’ thinking.
Perhaps elearning can be used as say a primer for reading support and assessment. But without the full insight of a responding human person, there can be no recitation or no reaction paper written in an elearning class for the arts and letters. The practical applications of quick and accessible training are just incompatible with the image of the Arts and it will probably always be that way until the end of time.
With the humanities, the teacher must always be present. The equation is simple, take away the human, then there is no humanities left at all. Of course courses such as literature can still be taught by computers, but the student will not be able to feel feedback from his or her insights. After all, the essay and reaction, analysis reports are essential to these subjects. And no computer built today is yet able to even process such things. Elearning solutions will always be effective in the corporate arena. It should also be used in the sciences and in math primarily. And finally, it can only act as supplementary or support to the subjects of Humanities.
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How A Good Quiz Maker Prevent Cheating On Online Testing
What abilities should a good quiz maker possess?
- Access ability to quiz
The ability of accessibility to quiz is a telling strategy to assure the security of your quiz. You can protect your quizzes from spread spitefully by some badman. It would be better if you have more options to set the access ability with quiz maker. Take Wondershare Quiz Maker for example, it supply four ways for users to access the quiz. Access with password only, access with user ID and password, online access control and domain limit online access. Of course, if you want the quiz spread anywhere by anyone, you also have the option to not set the accessibility.
- Time quiz
Looking up answers to questions in textbook/reading or searching the answers from website are the common issues for cheating. This is obvious when give giving a chapter check quiz. However, timed quiz is one of the most effective ways to eliminate such cheating. When students should answer the questions in a timed quiz in a certain amount of time, they won’t have time to look up all the answers if you give enough questions and make the time short enough. Such as the quiz with timer below which created by Wondershare Quiz Maker.
- Shuffle choices
If the quiz maker let you shuffle choices, it means that the order of choices within each question will be randomly shuffled each time an examinee attempts this quiz. So this makes it a little harder for students to copy from each other. It is an effective way to prevent cheating to some extent. Many quiz tools have such feature, such as Articulate QuizMaker below.
- Randomize questions
Randomizing questions reduces the chance of cheating. I will expound the reasons from the following two points.
Firstly, randomized questions make the printouts a lot less useful. Especially, when there are amount of questions in the question banks, students can only print a small number of questions at a time, if they want to get the full questions they will need to view the test again and again, and then sort the questions to eliminate duplicates.
Secondly, if students are on the same campus, they may get together in a lab and try to take the quiz together. Random question order is an easy strategy to thwart cheating. If my screen doesn’t look like yours, then it’s harder for students to quickly answer all of the questions.
- Limit answer attempts
Set a reasonable time limit for completion.
Limiting the amount of time to answers attempts for which students can access a test makes any form of cheating difficult to implement. Note: Don’t be too restrictive, but don’t give students forever either. Do not make the test available until the day you want students to begin taking it. - Multiple question types supported
The more quiz types the quiz maker has, the more efficacious the quiz to overcome online cheating. Particularly, Essays, case studies, and other complex question types can be challenging to answer even if students look up book. Students have to understand the material and apply it creatively to answer the questions. So how many question types a quiz maker supports is an important factor when choosing a quiz maker.
As far as I know, Moodle quiz module allows the teacher to design and set quizzes consisting of a large variety of Question types. But it is a little complex to create quiz. Take a view of the popular quiz makers, Articulate QuizMaker supports 9 types, Wondershare Quiz Maker supports 9 quiz types…
Of course, easy-to-use feature is also another factor to choose a quiz maker. There are also many free online quiz makers available: easytestmaker, classmaker and proprofs quizschool, you could make some small quiz with them. For make powerful multimedia Flash quiz, I suggest you choose some stand alone quiz maker. Articulate quizmaker is great, but it is a little expensive, you could take it into consideration. As for me, Wondershare Quiz Maker will be more cost-effective from its price and function.
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