A Virtual Learning Environment (WebCT and latter Moodle) was used to
provide students with instant, meaningful feedback on their study of chemistry
units during their first semester at University. Short multiple choice questions
(MCQ’s) were written covering each segment of material delivered in lectures
and made available to students over the University computer intranet to allow
“24/7” access. The most important aspect of the work was the feedback
offered to students within the questions, which was written by undergraduate
students to ensure its usefulness. The vast majority of the cohort used the
MCQ’s, most to gain formative feedback and some as a revision aid prior to
summative examinations. During the evaluation, students reported that they
found the ready access useful and helpful in learning the material. Some
students used the MCQ’s in preference to visiting tutors face to face (f2f) but
most expressed a preference for the usual tutorial programme over such CAL
methods. Most of the cohort used the feedback from the MCQ’s to guide their
revision, but again were not prepared to use CAL to replace f2f contact with
tutors. Our work meets a number of the published conditions for effective
feedback to occur. For example, it is immediate, timely and allows students to
receive frequent feedback at a level which means that it can be used to inform
further study. In the first year of using the MCQ’s, there was a significant
increase in the average marks in the end of unit examinations and a decrease
in the drop-out rate during Semester 1. Although firm conclusions cannot be
drawn from one year’s data, these results together with the very positive
reaction from the students encourage us to further develop the approach into
the open source VLE Moodle, which allowed us to address some of the
issues