I’m trying to create multiple choice questions using the “formulas type” question in moodle. I’m force to make a compromise and I’m trying to decide if the compromise is sufficiently bad to make the question “suck”.
So, my question is: Does this question suck? If yes, tell me what sucks about it.
I’d be more specific, but I”m trying to gauge if the compromise works not. Suffice it to say, I’m not really asking for proof-reading. If there’s a fixable typo, I want to fix it, so let me know. But if the the thing I consider sub-optimal doesn’t make it actually suck, I’m going to go ahead and make a bunch of these.
(BTW: there are lots of things good about this question. The formulas question permits lots of randomization, so as coded this question has 5*2*4*4*4*2 variants. It can ask for the impulse or the change in momentum, it has different exponents on the powers, it has different coefficients and so on. So I would really like for the thing that bugs me to be something that most people think doesn’t suck. But if it sucks, I don’t want to make a while bunch of these.)
Update: Thanks to Bernat Martinez, I can now avoid the thing I thought sucked. Here’s a different question. Notice the answer options now contain units. Yay!
I don’t see whatever it is that is bothering you. The wording looks like a fine alternative to What is the magnitude…
I don’t see what’s sucky about it.
That’s two. I think Paul Matthew’s doesn’t think it’s sucky either.
Ok… so what I consider suboptimal:
I’d prefer the question read:
The magnitude of the impulse acting on the ball in is closest to
But I can’t concatenate the numbers and the units in an answer list. If this doesn’t bother anyone else, I’m going to conclude that’s just a “lucia” thing. Because otherwise, I love lots of things about this question. It fixes things that suck about “calculated multiple choice”.
Bernat Martinez at the Moodle in English forum found the solution to my “problem”. I need to keep track of these solutions and he also provided me a link to info I need:
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=362817&parent=1463480
https://docs.moodle.org/33/en/Non-numerical_functions
Figures I’d forget to check my units…
mark,
The thing is, putting the units in the text is “done” on some tests. I just like it soooooo much better in the answer options.
But my impression is that it doesn’t bother other people so much. It didn’t jump out at you. It didn’t jump out at MikeN. It doesn’t seem to have bothered Paul. So it might just be me…..
Still, I’m writing these.
But I didn’t want to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Fortunately, Bernat Martinez came up with the solution. So now…. I just have to deal with my tendency toward typos, bungling my own answer and so on. But a lot of that is fixable if I write the questions one day and come back later. I do notice typos if I come back two days later, read the question and say… uhmmm huh? What did I mean to ask?
Lucia,
No, I agree with you. It’s ancient history therefore I may be imagining this but it’s my impression I lost points on tests back in the day for ignoring units. I’d think it’s a good sanity check habit for students to get into anyway – make sure the units come out right. But I don’t have that good habit myself.
I don’t think it matters but I prefer your version. I didn’t even evaluate that part as you asked about the question, and I was thinking in terms of your previous thread.
Wouldn’t have happened if they’d been paying attention to units.
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/
MikeN,
I wanted to see if this issue was so far off other peoples radar that what bugged me didn’t even matter. Now that I can have it the way I want, I will. But I do think it turns out having the units in the question is fine for most people. What bugged me a lot just doesn’t even hit them.
It’s moot now, but if one *couldn’t* include the units in the answer, I’d prefer that the question read:
“The magnitude of the impulse (in units of N-s) acting on the ball is closest to: …”
.
It’s important to get students to specify units, and check them in computation. I agree that it’s more natural to have the units in the answer choices. But I wouldn’t find it annoying or confusing to have the units in the question.
What sucks for me is trying to imagine a collision lasting 1 sec. Kinda like seeing a sign for slow children playing…
Tom,
🙂 Funny you should say that. I remember vividly imagining a ball deforming in slow motion during the collision the first time I read this problem. I shrugged and told myself, sure, why not!
Thomas,
I’ll change that! My “process” is usually:
Code/word. The numbers are then randomly generated withing a specification.
Let the problems “sit”, then laugh at some of them and fix the numbers. You’ve found a hilarious one. 🙂
I do have some guidelines for “best” features.
I want number to be easy to read– so the time isn’t going to be 0.0000001 s.
I want to avoid unit conversions (because the AP Physics tests avoid them.)
When possible, I want students to be able to do them without a calculator.
I do want to avoid ridiculous.
Mind you, 1 s isn’t always ridiculous. But… yeah. One of the features of a collision is that it’s supposed to be fast. So…. I’ll change that now.
Hmm… looking at my constraints… I made it “a large foam ball”. Clearly, it must be moving slowly, and this must be happening in outerspace:)
The driver for not making the time very small is I want both terms on the right hand side to “matter”, I want alpha and beta to both fall between 1-5. I don’t want the answer to be ridiculously large. Basically: I want a 1970s student to be able to do the math by hand and not use a calculator. That’s the way AP questions are written.