Established in 2007, the United Kingdom’s Association for Learning Technology’s “ALT Learning Technologist of the Year Awards” celebrate and reward excellent practice and outstanding achievement in the learning technology field globally.
Announced in December 2020, Prof. Frank Koch of OST Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences was successful in winning a prestigious 2020 Individual Award for the Moodle plugin, StudentQuiz.
StudentQuiz is a collaborative question bank that helps students create and share questions within Moodle.
“I started to work on Student Quiz in 2015 together with different student groups. It is now used by close to 1000 education institutions worldwide,” Prof. Koch says.
“There is a lot of knowledge and creativity within students and I wanted to empower students to create learning content by themselves. I used quizzes because students generally enjoy quizzes and students can learn a lot by creating questions to challenge their peers.”
“Moodle was developed with a commitment to pedagogy and social constructionist principles – we congratulate Prof. Koch on the award winning StudentQuiz plugin and its contribution to fostering student engagement and collaborative learning. It is an example of one of the greatest strengths of Moodle, and that is the community that has grown around the project.” Moodle Founder and CEO, Martin Dougiamas says.
Prof. Koch explains, “The theory behind StudentQuiz is called constructionism – to construct a question creates a better learning effect than simply answering a question and, once you can explain, you understand. So, learning content is actively created by the learner, not just passively received from the environment. Plus, the student community is also contributing to gauging the quality of the questions.
Students can comment on questions which often creates lively discussion about the proper answer. The discussion itself becomes part of the learning. The educator or instructor has the opportunity to approve or disapprove a question and each student can rate a question once he or she has answered it. Equally, the questions posed and ensuing discussion also informs the educator and consequently fosters inclusive instruction. Broadly, teachers act as coaches and facilitators through the collaborative learning process.”
With all the questions asked over the course or a topic, StudentQuiz forms a summary and provides valuable material for exam or assessment preparation.
For detailed information and installation details, visit moodle.org.
