ITEMS-IO5: Science Modules - European Commission

ITEMS: Improving Tools for E-assessment in Maths and ScienceERASMUS KA2 School Education project (2018-1DE01-KA203-004268)Contact: [email protected] project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author,and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

ITEMS OUTPUT 5:

Design/development/revision of a SCIENCE-Moodle (with FORMULAS

question) module for High School

Abstract: SCIENCE-ITEMS Output-5 consists of curricular material integrated in a Moodle course covering

kinematics content aimed at students aged 16-18 years old. Output leader is IES Mediterranea and it is

an Open Educational Resource (OER) that can be freely visited and downloaded using teacher/teacher

account at https://moodle.itemspro.eu/enrol/index.php?id=87

ITEMS project – ERASMUS KA2 School Education project – 2018-1DE01-KA203-004268 – itemspro.eu1

ITEMS-SCIENCE module structure

SCIENCE-ITEMS Output-5 consists of Research and ICT-based curricular material integrated in a Moodle

course covering kinematics content. It is aimed to be used for students aged 16-18 years old. It has been

created by IES Mediterranea and it has been reviewed by all partners under a peer pressure approach.

The ITEMS module is not just a storage of teaching resources (files, pdf’s, links,...) as usual in many

school Moodle installations. On the contrary, the course contains only interactive activities, mainly

quizzes. Quizzes are used in a double formative-evaluative way.

On the one hand, quizzes provide information to students as a fine-grained knowledge which include

videos, presentations and interactive simulations. Other quizzes are aimed to test the conceptual

understanding gained by students. These quizzes are composed of numerical, graphical and algebraic

questions with random data, which prevent student cheating. This is an innovative contribution to the

way Moodle is used in teaching, as traditional materials are mainly composed of true/false, numerical or

multiple-choice questions.

On the other hand, quizzes have a double evaluative purpose:

● For students’ own self evaluation, as questions have been designed in order to provide feedback

to students as a means of helping their learning to be more reflective.

● For teachers monitoring student understanding, by using Moodle evaluation tools and analytics,

an assessment system has been set up in order for teachers to monitor student progress and

achievement.

After some piloting of the course materials have been disseminated through several teacher courses and

professional development activities. During this process a lot of issues have appeared that have led to

materials revision and improvement.

ITEMS-Science module main features

There are two main features of Science-ITEMS modules:

1. Research based: Results of investigations on how students learn and their ideas on topics covered are

taken into account on planning and developing the material.

As regards learning paradigm we try to apply the Mastery Learning ideas: frequent formative tests and

feedback, with correct answers given after testing, guarantee that most students reach mastery, defined

as 90% of the marks in the formative tests. However mastery learning is somewhat cumbersome to

arrange by using traditional teaching methodologies.The paradigm calls for daily/weekly formative tests,

which require much effort to arrange, and these tests often have to be repeated.

In this way we try to take advantage of tests, not as an assessment tool, but as a teaching/learning tool,

which in learning theory is also known as the Testing Effect (Test-enhanced learning: the potential for

testing to promote greater learning in undergraduate science courses, C. J. Brame and R. Biel.2015)

ITEMS project – ERASMUS KA2 School Education project – 2018-1DE01-KA203-004268 – itemspro.eu2

As regards student’s ideas on specific topics, they are taken from recent works in Discipline-based

Research papers, mainly from Physical Review Physics Education Research website

(https://journals.aps.org/prper/). In this way, testing within the science classroom can also be a learning

event which is used for both formative and summative assessment purposes to let the student and the

teacher monitor progress toward learning goals.

2. Use of ICT based e-Assessment tools: By means of integrating JavaScript animations in Moodle

quizzes, an ICT-based automatic assessment system has been implemented designing a whole cycle of

formative tests and corrective measures.The use of such interactive animations allow students to

improve conceptual understanding and facilitate assessment in Science. These simulations have been

built following a serious-game approach in order to engage, motivate, and improve student’s learning. In

order to facilitate their use in different teaching scenarios, the main goal is that all animations are able

to run in every device (desktop computer, laptop or any mobile device) and by means of any browser

(Chrome, Firefox,...).

The main tool used in developing ITEMS animations is JSXGraph software. JSXGraph

(https://jsxgraph.org) is one of the most used JavaScript libraries for mathematical visualization in

web-based learning platforms and online assessment tools. It has been developed since 2007 at the

Center for Mobile Learning at the University of Bayreuth (Germany) as an open source project. It is

hosted at Github which allows it to be used in practically all e-learning scenarios.

ITEMS animations are included in Moodle activities in order to produce user-friendly and eye-appealing

learning situations. They have been built with a clear didactical intention derived from the results of

Discipline-based Education Research. The most important thing is that using the Moodle monitoring

system, teachers are able to know what is the result of every student's interaction with animations and

provide specific feedback according to the result. On the other hand, Moodle statistics system provides

learning analytics data on students' results as a group.

Animations are embedded in a Moodle FORMULAS or STACK question type. Both question types are

Moodle plugins with random values and multiple answer fields. The answer fields can be placed

anywhere in the question so that the teacher can create questions involving various answer structures

such as table, coordinate, polynomial, etc. Other features are available, as unit checking.

ITEMS project – ERASMUS KA2 School Education project – 2018-1DE01-KA203-004268 – itemspro.eu3

Some examples of Science-ITEMS activities

1. Motion Virtual experiment. It tries to replicate how a motion sensor is used to display p-t, v-t & a-t

graphs in real time. In the virtual experiment students have to drag the cursors in order to change the

track’s shape and the initial conditions). After some trial and error, students are able to perform the

correct configuration. See at https://youtu.be/tLukq9VyggA.

ITEMS project – ERASMUS KA2 School Education project – 2018-1DE01-KA203-004268 – itemspro.eu4

2. Drawing vectors. In this example, students have to sketch acceleration and velocity vectors at certain

points in a pendulum motion. Vector drawing is done by dragging points which are initially all

concentrated in one place. In the picture, all vectors are displayed in an incorrect answer of a student.

The correct answer is shown in the video https://youtu.be/UF6V9hsrD7U.

ITEMS project – ERASMUS KA2 School Education project – 2018-1DE01-KA203-004268 – itemspro.eu5

3. Parabolic motion problem. We use the Moodle STACK question type which evaluates it using the

computer algebra system Maxima. First it recognises the variable used and later interprets the student

answer, writing it in a more readable way.

ITEMS project – ERASMUS KA2 School Education project – 2018-1DE01-KA203-004268 – itemspro.eu6

Usage and Impact

This courseware is freely available as OER (Open Educational Resources) under a Creative Commons

license 3.0 Materials and can be accessed in different ways:

1. Materials can be freely visited. A visitor teacher account has been created: username = teacher

& password= teacher at https://moodle.itemspro.eu/course/view.php?id=87

2. Materials can be downloaded. Interested teachers can download the questions and the course

backup in order to test them in their own Moodle platform. Download is available at the course

https://moodle.itemspro.eu/course/view.php?id=87

3. Materials can be used as LTI External tool. The external tool is a new feature for Moodle which

offers a way for teachers to link to some ITEMS activities or to the whole course from within their

school Moodle course page and to have grades sent back into Moodle. Students only need to log

in to their school Moodle; they do not have to log in a second time to the connecting site. ITEMS

site allows connection to Moodle in this way acting as a Tool provider.

4. Course instances can be created on demand. Interested teachers with no school Moodle

installation can request a course to be created in the ITEMS server. Teacher and Students

accounts for log in the course are created by ITEMS admin. Requests for both (External tool &

course) can be made at [email protected]

Modules have been piloted by partner schools several times during the project life span. As a result of

this experience, schools have provided valuable feedback that have contributed to the improvement of

materials. Moreover, by creating the ITEMS Online Academy, the project has facilitated that around 20

teachers have gone further in experimenting the materials developed in different classroom contexts.

Project partners have contributed by mentoring teachers in using project materials while they are

teaching their own students. In total more than 700 students have tested the materials in various types

of teaching set-up. As a follow up, during school year 21-22, several Swiss and German Gymnasiums

have already started to translate the materials and to produce new materials based on the ones created

by the project.

ITEMS project – ERASMUS KA2 School Education project – 2018-1DE01-KA203-004268 – itemspro.eu7

At the end of every testing round, students completed an evaluation form. In general, they appreciate

the innovative materials created by ITEMS partnership as a way to better engage in SCIENCE subjects.

Some quotes are displayed below.

It is a good tool for a better understanding of the lesson.

It's easy to use and lets us see and experience how their functions and graphs work

My opinion is that this platform is useful for students. He can help you to recall some lessons.

I like this online material because it's an innovation.

This way of teaching is quite motivating because it puts the student in difficulty.

Dissemination

During project life span SCIENCE-ITEMS materials have been disseminated through different events. In

most of the events there has been a joint collaboration of all ITEMS partners, as regards Spanish National

events there has been a close collaboration of IES Mediterrània, Output leader, with BNedu and

Conselleria de Educacion, mainly through the CEFIRE network for teacher’s professional development.

On February 5th 2019 started the ITEMS teacher training course “PHYSICS digital-based materials based

on science education research”. Nearly 20 teachers attended the face to face initial session where they

were introduced to ITEMS approach and materials..On Tuesday, April 30th, it was held a contributed talk

on “A didactical perspective on teaching Newton’s Laws at High School” by Dr Jenaro Guisasola, Science

Education researcher at Basque Country University (UPV-EHU) and coordinador of the Science,

Technology and Mathematics Education Research Group.

On September, 3rd-4th 2019, in collaboration with Alicante University, it was held the COURSE: “Creation

of research-based digital materials (Moodle) to develop STEM competences”, where SCIENCE materials

were presented and discussed.

SCIENCE-ITEMS materials were presented at the MOOC-ITEMS project: creation of STEM diagnostic

questions for evidence-based teaching (July-Sept.2020) (OUTPUT 8) and later in the course:

ITEMS-Moodle materials for teaching High School Physics (18.1 to 28.2: 2021).

A digital publication “PROYECTO ITEMS: DESARROLLO DE UN SECUENCIA DIDÁCTICA PARA CINEMÁTICA

BASADA EN LAS TIC Y EN LA INVESTIGACIÓN DIDÁCTICA” presenting the main innovative and

research-based JSXGraph constructions dealing with motion (Kinematics).was performed by Luís

Gonzalez Cortés (IES Mediterrania), Marc Bernat Martínez Alemany (BNEdu) and Emilio José Moncho

Gascón (IES LaNucia), which is one of the teachers who has tested the materials, in Quaderns Digitals nº

ITEMS project – ERASMUS KA2 School Education project – 2018-1DE01-KA203-004268 – itemspro.eu8

90. Monográfico Ciencias ISSN 1575-9393 Nº 90 April 2020 pp. 49-57

http://www.quadernsdigitals.net/index.php?accionMenu=hemeroteca.VisualizaArticuloIU.visualiza&arti

culo_id=11532

As regards education conferences, ITEMS has been presented at the online International Conference on

Science Education (SIEC 2020) organised by Vigo University (Spain). Luis Gonzalez (IES Mediterrania) and

Marc Bernat Martinez (BNEdu) presented a communication on the Physics materials piloted at several

Spanish Schools.

https://itemspro.eu/2020/06/14/items-communication-at-siec-2020/.

Finally, as an extension of Output 5, which was initially planned to develop only Formulas questions,

Physics STACK questions were developed and piloted through the collaborators schools. In April 2021,

they were presented at the International Meeting of the STACK Community 2021.

Moreover, some work was done on extending SCIENCE materials to Astronomy by creating STACK

questions with JSXgraph animations for Secondary School that were presented as a communication at

STEM Teaching Conference (Valencia May 2021) ITEMS Project: Development of a didactic sequence of

the Sun-Earth-Moon system(1ESO).

ITEMS project – ERASMUS KA2 School Education project – 2018-1DE01-KA203-004268 – itemspro.eu9