Using Online Weekly Quizzes in a Numeracy Unit within a University Preparation Course

Abstract

Edith Cowan University (Perth, Western Australia) offers a University Preparation Course to provide entry to degree programs to school leavers and mature age students who do not fulfil traditional entry requirements. The Course contains a Numeracy unit which involves over 300 students, spread over four campuses, and coordinated and taught entirely by sessional staff. In this paper a discussion is provided of the advantages and disadvantages the author experienced with integrating online weekly quizzes into the Numeracy unit. The quizzes are administered by Blackboard, a Learning Management System that allows students to access material and quizzes anytime via the internet. The Numeracy unit is comprised of eleven modules and each has an associated quiz to provide incentive for students to “keep up to date” with their work. The quizzes are also made available to students in the week prior to their final exam for revision purposes. Answers are not provided to weekly quizzes but are included with the revision quizzes. This paper outlines the design of the quizzes and technical issues involved with their implementation using the Blackboard platform. In addition, the author realises that students may guess or have help completing the quizzes, so the author looks at the reliability of the within term quiz results by comparing them with the final exam mark associated with similar multiple choice questions.