August 2006 Edition OWC's LTech Web
New Name, New Look
Visit Our New Website
LTech Website
We have a new name, “Learning Technologies” (or LTech, for short). The new name better reflects our emphasis on all learning technologies, and it’s a lot shorter than the old one, “Instructional Technology and Distance Learning.”

We hope “Learning Technologies” will make it more apparent to instructors where to turn for technologies used in the classroom, whether traditional face-to-face or online distance learning.

We have a new website to accompany our new name, and you can see it now at http://ltech.nwfstatecollege.edu/. Check out the new look, and let Learning Technologies help you integrate technology into teaching and learning!

Writing Better Multiple Choice Quiz Questions, Part 3
This month we’ll conclude our discussion of writing better multiple choice questions. For parts 1 and 2 of this discussion, in which specific types of multiple choice questions were discussed, please click these links: Part 1, Part
2

Remember the basic terminology of multiple choice questions: stem (the body of the question, which precedes all answer alternatives), answer alternatives (all the possible answers), and distractors (the wrong answers).

Here are some tips that apply to all the question types we’ve discussed in the previous two newsletters:

General

  1. Make sure that the questions are related to a course objective or instructional goal on the syllabus.
  2. Ask questions about important knowledge; avoid asking about trivia.
  3. Use plain, exact language in both questions and directions.
  4. Avoid trick questions.
  5. Avoid double negatives.
  6. Specify in the directions whether students should select the “correct” or “best” answer.
  7. Avoid the jargon unless the quiz tests understanding of these terms.


Read the rest of this article.

Quick Tech Tip: When the Back Button Doesn't Work
The BACK button is a useful feature of the browser, and it is probably clicked more than any other button during a typical web session. But sometimes a user finds herself stuck on a page that won't let her go back to the previous page, no matter how hard or fast she clicks her trusty green westward-pointing arrow. Why does this happen? It has to do with the coding of a particular webpage, but knowing that it's not the poor BACK button's fault doesn't help the problem. Knowing the following, however, will:

Whether you use Internet Explorer (pictured here) or Firefox, you should see a small, downward-pointing triangle to the right of your BACK button. Click that triangle to open a menu that lists the pages you've most recently viewed. The one at the very top is probably the sticky page that you want to avoid, but the rest are listed from most recent to oldest. Click one, and you'll be free of the mire.

Happy surfing!


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