Chalkface Blog

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Author: Ian Grove-Stephensen

  • A wee note for authors about time and information

    When writing any part of a question, please think about timeframe, and the student’s perception of time. In the case of a feedback statement, you have perhaps 10-20s during which the student can remain focused on the current question and the issue of “why did I just get that wrong”? In this time, you can…

  • Beginners’ guide to Cloze questions

    Beginners’ guide to Cloze questions

    Cloze or ‘gap fill’ questions are staple of language teaching, but they have many uses. For example: Vocabulary, especially in MFL Word suffix/prefix, e.g. in grammar or for chemical terms Numerical input Knowledge where correct spelling will be rewarded in an exam Where guessing would be too easy in a multiple choice question Yacapaca’s implementation of…

  • How to author a course

    In Yacapaca, a course is basically a way to collate quizzes into a logical structure. It enables you to provide teachers’ notes and downloadable files such as lesson plans or worksheets. A course also has its own markbook, enabling teachers to see results grouped separately from other assignments should they wish to. What it’s not: a Yacapaca…

  • Managed analytics for your quizzes instantly improve lesson planning

    Managed analytics for your quizzes instantly improve lesson planning

    A pre-test serves two functions, to provide a baseline from which to demonstrate progression, and as a planning tool to help you focus on the most-needed areas. We have just launched a really significant improvement on this latter function, that has the potential to make a real difference to the efficiency of your (and your colleagues’)…

  • Could we automatically analyse your students through their writing?

    I have been experimenting this morning running Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) over students’ peer feedback responses. So far, all I’ve done is analyse the last 50,000 responses in aggregate, and only on a few dimensions. Here is what I found: The ‘personal’ and ‘formal’ columns are comparison averages generated by the system. I assume…