2000 GSA Annual Meeting -- Reno, Nevada
2000 GSA Annual Meeting -- Reno, Nevada
Author(s): LINNEMAN, Scott R., Department of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225, scott.linneman@wwwu.edu; MYERS, James D., Department of Geology & Geophysics, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071
Keywords: education, WWW, geoscience
In large introductory Earth science classes, a student often has a difficult time assessing his/her understanding of a topic. Typically, their first assessment is an exam covering several topics and administered several weeks into the course. A better way for students to assess their own progress is to separate the student's assessment from the grading process. This can be accomplished by providing a stress-free mechanism that allows students to choose the time/place of assessment, the topics covered and the number and types of questions asked and provides immediate student feedback. If such activities also incorporate multimedia, they can be an active component of a student's learning experience. The Earth Science Test Bank (ESTB) is a database-driven, Web interactive testing and teaching application developed at the University of Wyoming. It permits students to assess their progress in a course independent from the instructor's grading system and is readily adaptable by other educational institutions. The application handles twelve question types; incorporates a variety of multimedia formats; organizes questions and multimedia by categories; permits grouping of questions into tasks; and gives immediate student feedback. Students can also select the categories they wish to be tested on. Since the categories are stored in the database as fields, ESTB can be readily tailored to individual classes. Depending upon their type and function, questions can be graded automatically or reviewed later by an instructor. Instructors insert questions, answers, detractors, and associated media into the database via Web forms. An instructor can arrange a group of questions into a variety of tasks each incorporating one or more question types. Depending upon the purpose of the task, student results may be stored in the database or simply returned via a Web page. Questions can also be used for a variety of Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) exercises. Using ESTB to record answers may allow an instructor to adapt JiTT techniques to a class that otherwise would be too large. ESTB uses an Access database, HTML 4.0, Active Server Pages and Internet Information Server 4.0. Given this hardware/software configuration, ESTB can be adapted to most academic Web server environments.
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