Moodle quizzes for assessing statistical topics in engineering studies

In 2005 the virtual campus Atenea of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) started to use Moodle, an open source learning management system that offers a wide variety of teaching tools. One of these tools, the quiz module, represents an alternative to traditional face-to-face courses and paper-based testing. In order to explore how to apply this new tool, in 2008 we started to carry out some projects subsidised by the Institute of Education Sciences of the UPC. These projects cover the compulsory undergraduate subjects in applied mathematics and statistics included in the first and second year syllabuses for all branches of engineering. The main aim of these projects is to design, implement, assess and revise a substantial bank of quiz questions and quizzes created for those courses. This contribution is centred on Statistics, a subject taught at the School of Agricultural Engineering of Barcelona (ESAB) in Spain. This contribution focuses on the assessment of six Moodle quizzes performed in the second term of the current year. In particular, the aims are to analyse students’ answers, to carry out a psychometric analysis to identify the appropriateness of the questions stated in the quizzes, and to assess student ratings on this activity as a guide for improving the teaching process. The quizzes were designed to be worked out in computer lab sessions and for chapter checking as an autonomous study. From this first and positive experience regarding the Moodle quiz module in the subject of Statistics, we intend to redesign some of the quizzes in the future, taking into account not only the results supplied by the psychometric analysis, but also student results and ratings of the activity.