An Applet a Day: Using Java for Interactive Assessment

Dr Geoff Crisp
Department of Chemistry

"It's about providing students with web tools so that they can manipulate their learning materials and generate more sophisticated responses."

Background | Aims | Process | Evaluation

 

Background

Student learning patterns are strongly dependent on the assessment they are asked to undertake. The problem with most of the common forms of web assessment, such as Multiple Choice Questions, (MCQ's), is that the level of interactivity required from the student is very limited. The student reads the question, looks at the associated graphics or sounds and answers the question. Although it is possible to construct questions that test synthesis and evaluation, it is very time consuming as the teacher is trying to verbalise abstract concepts that require a complex manipulation of ideas, data and visual construction.

If online assessment is to be more than MCQ's testing recall it will need to motivate students by encouraging true interactivity. Students need to actively test ideas and consequences in real time in order to make connections between numerous abstract concepts. Java applets and Java scripts allow just this. Assessment then is not an activity that takes place after learning, but rather assessment becomes an integral part of the learning process.

Aims

This project had two driving forces:

• The first was a desire to improve student learning through assessment that provided feedback that was integrated with learning.
• The second was to improve student support in an era of diminishing resources.

One way to achieve these goals was to raise the level of the kinds of interactions available to students on the web.

Process

Many academic teachers use technology and multimedia to enhance their presentations and students usually respond favourably to visually stimulating material. It should be possible to use this same approach to enliven both formative and summative assessment tasks. We are involved in developing modules for online assessment (in our case using the commercial package Test Pilot1). In particular, we are incorporating freeware or shareware java applets and javascript into the assessment tasks. Our goal is to enhance the experience and performance of students undertaking any form of online assessment or web-based interactive activity by providing a suite of tested applications that can be embedded into the assessment or online activity.

The students take data, information or a scenario and manipulate aspects of these. As a result of their intervention additional information is generated that enables the students to answer questions, form hypotheses and achieve a deeper understanding of the topic. The end result is that students are more aware of what they don't know or find difficult to understand.

Rather than replacing face-to-face teaching, the Java applets are designed to augment live interactions between students and teachers. Student support, according to this rationale, needs to enable students to better articulate their problems so they get maximum value from face-to-face teaching time.

The types of Java applets that Chemistry is presently using include 3 dimensional representation of molecules that can be rotated in real time and bond lengths and angles obtained, a chemical structure drawing package that allows students to draw chemical structures and reactions over the web, an online scientific calculator, a slide show for presenting additional information without the need for scrolling, and the use of graphing packages that deliver statistical information for use in equations.

This approach has a number of advantages, including making the tasks interactive and visually stimulating, as well as enabling students to progress beyond recall responses to multiple choice questions. The approach we are taking is not dependent on the commercial software we are using but would be applicable to many of the online assessment tools available.

For examples of some of these applets see:
http://ajax.acue.adelaide.edu.au/

or play the traffic light game:

Evaluation

Evaluation will take place later this year and again in the following year. The point of the evaluation will not be to test the value of Java applets as opposed to some other solution, but primarily to seek student feedback on the usefulness of these tools. The overall aim of the Faculty is to improve the educational experience by providing better support mechanisms, of which the interactive Java applets are only one aspect.

A reasonable question to ask is 'Why Java Applets? ' Often proprietary products are browser or platform dependent. Also, plug-ins are often required - which immediately puts up a barrier for off campus students. Java applets attempt to resolve these issues. The resolution is, for a number of reasons, sometimes imperfect, but the aim is laudable. However, there is no special allegiance to Java; if a product better able to deliver this cross-browser, cross-platform performance emerges then the project team will use it.

Further development

Building up the applet collection is the first step. The next will be writing instructions on how others can incorporate them into the activities of their discipline area.