Whatever happened to the system of sending test
results to the students and instructors?
For
several years we used a system of having students take tests
online and the graded test results, along with a list of
questions answered wrong, would be sent by e-mail to both
the instructor and the student involved.
A great idea, but —
Internet problems sometimes intervened. Students would
regularly write saying they took a test and it never arrived in the instructor's mail box. Although some of the problems resulted from typos in e-mail addresses, others seemed to result from Internet problems.
In one case the tests of an entire class at one school disappeared
into cyberspace when some problem developed. (You wouldn't have wanted to be there for the response to that!)
Added to that was the fact that the e-mail program
was being used by spammers to send out hundreds of spam messages.
For these reasons, this system was discontinued
and, for now, we've gone back to a more reliable and secure approach.
At the same time many browsers give you the option of
sending pages (including test result pages) to an e-mail address. Although
results can be altered, just sending this page indicates that the student
has in some way attended to the tests. The more trusted and secure approach,
of course, should wait until in-class testing.
In addition to the Interactive tests, the word squares, the interactive matching quizzes, and the interactive crossword puzzle links at the bottom of modules, there are several tests that instructors can get by
and showing that you are an instructor (and not a student
looking for test answers).
