Oregon Offers Google Programs to Schools

3 Stories:

Oregon became the first state in the nation to sign up for Google Apps for Education, which is free, in kindergarten though 12th grade classrooms across its 197 school districts. Read more here.

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Oregon will be the first state to offer Google's free Internet communication and collaboration service to its public schools. Read more here.

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Oregon educators hope a free Web-based software application will help students become digitally literate while saving money for struggling school districts. The Oregon Department of Education began offering Google Apps for Education to public school districts on Wednesday. Read more here.

Moodle Testing Security Options

From time to time, I am asked "How can I make my Moodle tests more secure and prevent cheating?"

I wish I had a definitive answer for you, but in reality, securing an online quiz is somewhat difficult, as is that of a traditional quiz. Although the methods used to secure an online quiz will differ from that of a traditional quiz, one needs to look at the whole process and find a solution that works.

One can never totally prevent someone from cheating on a test, but only make it less fruitful to cheat.

Take a look at the Quiz Settings page in Moodle. There are many options there that can assist. This link can help explain some of the settings for quizzes.

I would offer the following as potential "options" you may want to use for general quiz security:

1. Change the "Browser security" drop-down to "Full screen pop-up with some JavaScript security" from "None"
2. On the "Display" section, select "1" for "Questions per page" (this help to negate printing out the entire quiz).
3. Set a time-limit for the quiz (this helps to negate the use of textbooks or other materials).
4. Hide any of your course content on the day of the quiz (except the quiz) so students don't have access to any notes or other content while the quiz is open.
5. Only allow the quiz to be open for a certain time period and make yourself available during that time for technical assistance.
6. Randomize questions from a large question pool.
7. Set a time limit for taking the test.
   

There are other settings and practices that you may want to consider as well.

Moodle Gradebook Scoring Issue

Hi everyone;

There’s a characteristic of Moodle’s grade book we all need to be aware of. If we do not follow this procedure, the grades could be seriously skewed across campus.

When we enter a student’s score on the grid after a test or assignment, that number will indicate not only the student’s performance on that item, but in some cases also indicate her overall performance on the course, based on that item alone.

If a student is missing an assignment, we must manually enter the appropriate cell on the grade book and enter a “0”.

The hyphen that is already in the cells by default simply takes the cell(s) out of the total calculation.

What This Means

If you have ten assignments for the course, each graded out of 10 points, for a course total for 100 points, and a student hands in only one assignment on which he scored 9, then his course grade will read as 90% or A- even though he did only 10% of the course work.

You must open the other cells and enter a “0”.

Onward!

Terrance Millet M.A., M.F.A.