I decided to create one question and then see how it looked within each application.
This post is a discussion about the question that I used, what made it a good question and some limitations with the question.
The question
I created a map that included some of Europe. On that I placed arrows pointing to specific places with ABCD or E indicating the different places. One of the places that an arrow pointed to was Sochi in Russia. The question was: Where is Sochi?What's a good question?
Let's take the Sochi example … what makes it good? Here are some points...- The text is short
- It offers precise visual options
- The question can be used in other contexts as the arrows on it all pointed to real places, for example Moscow, Minsk
- It's current: I could add a prefix to that as "The Winter Olympics 2014"
- It doesn't offer too many options for response
What are the limitations of the question?
- Visual issue: I might need to explain where the pointers were without giving it away, for example, is it by the Black Sea? Is it as far north as Latvia? Is it in Belarus? And so on.
- Fortunately all of the response systems used images. However, one of them produced an image that was pretty small. In this case, I might present the image alone beforehand.
- It assumes that you know it's in Russia or thereabouts. I could have presented a map of the world and stood back to see where the answers went.
Response systems
Some response systems enable you to point to the location so I didn't even need to have put the letters A to E there. Others didn't enable the image to be resized; one in particular produced an image that took up less than a quarter of the screen.Presenting - note!
Unless you wanted them to go to the Internet and to do a quick search the Sochi then and non-Internet system would be best to this.Finally
The question that I delivered: where is Sochi is one that is a recall type of question, that is, one that tests knowledge. What I could have done was to ask people to apply the knowledge. Something that might ascertain their conceptual understanding or even a question that would test their knowledge and understanding. I could have asked them: if you were holding the Winter Olympics where would be the best location out of the 5 suggested?I await comments from the workshop group….
(By the way, there follows a Creative Commons map that shows Sochi... it's one of the locations that is marked with a black dot!)
