Feedback

For low stakes, self-tests, allow the students to see all the answers as well as the answers they chose. All feedback can be available, and incorrect responses indicated.

Or you might decide to hold back some information until the Availability Date has passed.

Feedback

You may choose to restrict any feedback to students.

NUI Galway does not have a formal process in place for supporting high stakes MCQs. Anybody who undertakes to examine students using the Tests feature on Blackboard should understand that there is a certain level of risk involved.  Some recommendations are provided:

• Make sure there are more computers than students in a lab  one or two computers are likely to give problems.
• Have a paper version of the test on standby, with pens/pencils, and be prepared to revert to this if necessary.
• Make sure that students have had the opportunity to try the test functionality within Blackboard before the examination date. This could be a sample test or a self-study test.
• When booking the labs, make sure that the hosts (ISS or other) are aware that you are using them for the purpose of examinations.
• We do not currently have a lock-down browser functionality.

On Blackboard, when deploying the test, we recommend the following settings:

• Don’t open the test in a new window. This reduces (but does not eliminate) the opportunity for a student to browse Blackboard while taking the test.

• Allow, but limit, multiple attempts.  This is to avoid a situation where a student gets locked out of a test by mistake, but doesn’t allow a student to take a test multiple times.
• Do not Force Completion. This has caused problems with students being locked out of tests and needing intervention by an instructor to clear the original attempt.

• Do set the timer. This causes a countdown to appear while the student is taking the test, but also records the completion time for the test. If you set Auto-Submit ON, the student is thrown out of the test when the time countdown reaches zero.

• Make the test available for a restricted time period only. The link (within the Blackboard course) will only appear to students as long as the test is available, and within the indicated times.

• Set a password, which is only made available to students within the exam centre. After you are sure that every student has started the test, change the password. This means that students cannot share the password to any students outside the exam centre.

• Show no feedback to students following the test.

• Once you have deployed the test in a course, a column is also created in the Grade Centre.
  To ensure that marks do not get inadvertently released to students through MyGrades, we recommend that you hide the Grade Centre entry from students.