Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

14 – Assessment and Evaluation
In the example shown above, the ^ tells the parser
that the entry has to begin at the beginning of the line;
the + tells the parser that it can match one or more occurrences
of the character immediately to the left (in this
case a space); the \ tells the parser that the character
following is a period (not a meta character); the ? tells
the parser that the character to the left (the period) may
or may not be there, but if it is there it should only occur
once; and the $ tells the parser this should be the end of
the entry. As I do not want my quizzes to be a course
about typing, regular expressions can reduce significantly
the number of answers marked incorrect due to
trivial typing errors. This mean all the following would
be treated as correct by the regular expression parser:
Some O are F.
some o are f.
some o ARE F
SOME O ARE F
The following are links to pages about Regular Expression:
• Henk’s Test a RegExp
http://home.wanadoo.nl/h.schotel/testaregex/
• Henk’s Quia Page
http://www.quia.com/pages/regex.html
• The Regex Coach
http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/
• Regular Expression HOWTO
http://www.amk.ca/python/howto/regex/
• Regular-Expressions.info
http://www.regular-expressions.info/
One of the links is to an applet, which tests your
RegularExpression, another is to the Regex Coach, a
program which can be downloaded. I have found both
these tools invaluable when creating regular expressions.
The other links are to online reference material about
RegularExpression. Some of these links were created and
are maintained by Henk Schotel. For those who have
visited the WebCT Home Page and specifically the Dr. C
support facility, you will recognize Henk as one of the
experts who contributes to Dr. C.
Third-party tools
There are several free or low-cost third-party assessment
tools available over the Internet:
• The Discovery School website “offers teachers of all
subjects and array of powerful tools” for assessment
(http://school.discovery.com/teachingtools/teachingto
ols.html). Use Puzzlemaker to generate crossword
puzzles, word searches, and math squares. Visit the
Quiz Center to create and give quizzes. Try the
Worksheet Generator to create custom worksheets
for your course materials.
• Higher education and K–12 instructors use Quia
(‘key- ah) “to create customized educational software
online, built around their own course materials and
made available to students over the Web”
(http://www.quia.com/company/quia_web.html). Quia
is a subscription-based service.
• Half Baked Software, Inc., created Hot Potatoes, a set
of applications that allow instructors “to create interactive
multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence,
crossword, matching/ ordering and gap-fill exercises
for the World Wide Web” (http://hotpot.uvic.ca/).
You can also include MP3 audio files and math symbols
as part of these assessment activities. Hot Potatoes
requires a licensing fee, unless you work for a
publicly funded, non-profit educational institution.
• QuizStar is a free web-based tool for K–12 instructors
to create and assign quizzes, manage student results,
and allow students “to review the results for further
learning” (http://quizstar.4teachers.org/).
Some publishers offer assessment tools that accompany
textbook activities. For example, Glencoe Online
Mathematics provides an Online Study Tools site
(http://www.glencoe.com/sec/math/studytools/index.ph
p4).
Authentic student assessment
strategies for the online
environment
by Kevin Kelly
Often when we talk of assessment in an online environment,
we think of automated quizzes and grade books.
While useful in many circumstances, automated quizzes do
not always accurately reflect a student’s abilities, especially
when you are asking them to achieve a higher level
of difficulty in the cognitive learning domain, to demonstrate
a physical skill in the psychomotor learning domain,
or to evaluate attitudes in the affective learning
domain (see description of learning domains and degrees of
Education for a Digital World 239