Student X has done the reading all term, they promise! It just happens they missed [concept covered in reading] and must’ve been [doing a good student-like activity] when you talked about [concept covered in lecture]. Now it’s finals week, Student X has no idea what is going on, and it’s going to hurt to fail them. If only there were a way to ensure they were doing the reading (or at worst, have documentation when the grade challenge comes)…

I have been working with James Riely, who teaches a hybrid Data Structures course in the College of Computing and Digital Media, to develop a series of low-value quizzes so he can painlessly assess student reading, lecture attention, and concept mastery. Not only are these quizzes useful for James, but they also allow students to self-assess their grasp of the concepts so they can reach out if need be. And since Data Structures is a hybrid course, we also created a simple method to take attendance for both on-ground and on-line cohorts so James does not have to.

The three types of quizzes we created are as follows:

• Pre-Lecture Reading – Students must recall a general concept from the reading. If they did the reading they should get this question easily.
• Attendance / Attention – Students must recall a secret word to determine if they are paying attention during the lecture. The word is said at a random time in the lecture. Each quarter the word changes, requiring a simple adjustment to the attendance quiz.
• Post-Lecture Mastery – Students must recall reading and lecture materials to assess if they have grasped the materials. If they’ve done the reading and watched the lecture, this quiz should not be difficult. 10 quiz questions are drawn randomly from a pool in the question library to discourage collaboration.

Each of the quizzes are auto-graded and the score is exported to the Grades area in Desire2Learn. It takes James no time to administer or grade these quizzes and he doesn’t even need to review the results (if he doesn’t want to), but a quick sort of the quiz scores in D2L will show which students are having trouble. James can even use the information from the Mastery quiz to see where a key concept may need to be further explained before moving on in the course.

Even better, since the quizzes are set to draw random questions from a pool, James can add a few questions each semester to the Post-Lecture Mastery Question Library and before long there will be a relatively large pool to pull from.

The down-side of D2L quizzing is that adding questions one-by-one is quite time-consuming. Fortunately James is using the Learn@UW Quiz Question Importer Tool to convert plain-text questions into a D2L compatible format upload large batches of questions to the Question Library.

Attached is a D2L Export file called LCSA-d2l-import-file which contains:

• 10 Attendance Quizzes
• 10 Pre-Lecture Reading Quizzes (with random question sections linked to the Question Library)
• 10 Post-Lecture Mastery Quizzes (with random question sections linked to the Question Library)
• Question Library structures for each of the quizzes
• Grades linked to each of the quizzes

No questions were included in the file, as the questions you ask will vary. Below are instructions for loading the quizzes into D2L.

Import All Quizzes (Attendance and Pre-Lecture Reading and Post-Lecture Mastery)

To put all of the quizzes, question library, and grades into your course (in D2L 9.4) follow these instructions:

1. Access your course
2. Click EDIT COURSE
3. Click “Import/Export/Copy Components”
4. Select “Import Components”
5. Click BROWSE and select the file
6. Click NEXT
7. Wait for D2L to read the package and click NEXT
8. Check “Select All Components”
9. Click NEXT
10. Confirm the correct items are being imported and click NEXT
11. Wait for the import process to finish and click NEXT
12. All done!

Import Selected Quizzes (Attendance and/or Pre-Lecture Reading and/or Post-Lecture Mastery)

To put a subsection of the quizzes, question library, and grades into your course (in D2L 9.4) follow these instructions. Remember to check the right items to import in each area. For example, if you were to import Attendance quizzes you should choose “Attendance” in Quizzes, Grades, and Question Library:

1. Access your course
2. Click EDIT COURSE
3. Click “Import/Export/Copy Components”
4. Select “Import Components”
5. Click BROWSE and select the file
6. Click NEXT
7. Wait for D2L to read the package and click NEXT
8. Check “Select All Components”
9. In GRADES choose “Select individual items to import”
10. In QUESTION LIBRARY choose “Select individual items to import”
11. In QUIZZES choose “Select individual items to import”
12. Click NEXT
13. Check the type of GRADES items you would like to import (i.e. Attendance, Post-Quiz, or Pre-Quiz)
14. Click NEXT
15. Check the type of QUESTION LIBRARY items you would like to import (i.e. Attendance, Post-Quiz, or Pre-Quiz)
16. Click NEXT
17. Check the type of QUIZZES items you would like to import (i.e. Attendance, Post-Quiz, or Pre-Quiz)
18. Click NEXT
19. Confirm the correct items are being imported and click NEXT
20. Wait for the import process to finish and click NEXT
21. All done!

Now the easy part is over and it’s time to write some questions. Remember the Learn@UW Quiz Question Importer Tool will make it much easier to get large batches of questions into the Question Library. Once you’ve added your questions to the Question Library, make sure you add them to the Random sections of questions in each of the Quizzes.

If anything is unclear or you have a neat way of painlessly assessing your students, please let me know in the comments.