APA Newsletters
Fall 1999
Volume 99, Number 1

Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers

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Philosophy Self-Assessment Exercises on the Web at Glasgow University

Introduction

Over the past eighteen months we in the Department of Philosophy at Glasgow University have written, developed, and implemented on-line self-assessment exercises for our pre-honours Level 1 and 2 classes. In this article I will explain our rationale for setting up these exercises, how the exercises have been perceived by the students for whom they were designed, and where we see our use of computer-mediated teaching proceeding in the future.

Our Rationale for Developing Web-Based Exercises

At present we have seven Level 1 classes, ranging from moral philosophy to philosophy of religion, political philosophy, philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, and philosophy of science. At Level 2 we have two classes in which we cover a further range of topics but also include a compulsory logic module. In total we have approximately 800 students attending these classes at any one time in the academic year. This is clearly a number that is difficult to deal with even with unlimited resources.

At present we have fortnightly tutorials in Level 1, with about twelve people in each group. These are complemented by fortnightly workshops where students meet informally to discuss issues raised in their courses. These workshops do not have a tutor present, and are aimed at the group getting to know one another and overcome their reticence about speaking to the group. In Level 2 we have weekly tutorials with extra logic tutorials held on a fortnightly basis. If students want to consult a member of staff with regard to a particular question they can attend a weekly office hour that the staff member sets aside for consultations of this sort. Students are encouraged to make full use of these hours, and can consult any member of staff, not just their tutor.

Unfortunately, students don’t always feel confident enough to contribute in tutorials or attend these office hours. Their hesitation may be based on their not knowing if their question is too easy, or if they’ve just missed the point of what’s been said, or if they’re simply going to appear stupid to someone they want to impress.

With such a large class of students, their natural reticence and, of course, the possibility that a student doesn’t realize that they’ve misunderstood something, to overcome we decided that we needed some new teaching resource that would catch and sustain their attention, and that would address fundamental problems. In other cognate areas the Web was being employed as a pedagogical tool and its advantages were clear: it could be used anonymously by the students in their own time, at a pace at which they felt comfortable proceeding, and by completing the exercise and submitting it for assessment it was possible for students to gauge for themselves how much of the course they had grasped.

Unfortunately, the disadvantages of such a format were also clear. In philosophy argumentation skills are nurtured, and the sorts of exercise that were possible on the Web were not, at first glance, of this nature. Rather they fell into the categories of multiple choice or multiple response type questions that would not seem to stretch the students’ thinking in the way in which we wanted. However, if what we were trying to do was build student confidence about what they felt they’d understood, and if we were trying to make ourselves "available" at times that suited them rather than at office hours that they couldn’t or wouldn’t make, then these exercises had a clear role to play in our teaching.

The most important thing that we were doing was providing students with what I’ll call "baseline knowledge." By this I mean that there are basic terms and theories, even knowledge of the "Leibniz says this" sort, that students have to be able to use with ease if they are going to progress in philosophy, and if they haven’t got this baseline knowledge they cannot move forward. It’s a little like becoming a competent language user—you can’t use a language properly if all you know are the syntactic rules; you also need to know what the words mean and the proper contexts for their employment. Baseline knowledge in philosophy is just this, the sort of stuff that once you’re competent you take for granted. It’s not deep insightful stuff, just things you need to master if you’re going to be part of the philosophical community.

In the sciences and mathematics we take an understanding of this sort of knowledge as fundamental, because in the sciences and mathematics there is a large technical base. Philosophy and the arts are not usually thought of as having a large technical base, but for many students the fundamentals of the subject are simply bewildering. It is these fundamentals, the "baseline knowledge," that we wished to address in the self-assessment exercises.

What We Did

We wanted something that, once set up, would be self-assessing, that is, that didn’t require tutor time correcting and commenting on the student responses. I discovered an assessment engine that was been developed by David McNicol as part of a project called Clyde Virtual University <http://cvu.strath.ac.uk>, set up by Strathclyde University, Glasgow, and funded by SHEFC (Scottish Higher Education Funding Council). This is a tool that is relatively simple in conception that provides an authoring tool in which to write the exercises and an assessment engine that marks the students’ responses, proffering feedback on errors and commentary that indicates how a good answer might be pursued and developed.

In Figure 1 the student has got the question right and has received positive feedback on the answer. Although the exercises are conceived of as a test we are using the engine for self-assessment and in essence to sweep up a whole category of common misconceptions that can undermine any student’s progress.
In Figure 2 we can see a student getting the answer wrong and being directed to specific pages in the set text for the course, in this case Language, Truth and Logic, Pelican edition. There is also a quotation to help them identify the section more precisely.

One thing worth reiterating to students is that the exercises are not intended as a substitute for tutorials or office hours, but as a supplement to them. They are there for their use and the element of assessment is there so they can gauge their improvement; indeed, if they want to they can happily resubmit their answers until they get them all right. Students are informed of this in a document telling them about the exercises (see Figure 3).

Departmental Gains

There are a number of departmental gains. Firstly, there is no doubt that the exercises have freed up some staff time. Certainly, this will not be the case for all members of staff because they may not have been people that students tended to seek out anyway. Secondly, the exercise format, multiple choice and multiple response, may at first seem restrictive, but it does force us, when writing the exercises, to be more imaginative and ask questions that will lead students through their course pack reading or any set course texts. Thirdly, those members of staff who have written exercises have had to think carefully about what students at this level find difficult and what questions they might ask. The resistance that some members of staff feel toward the exercises may in part be the result of not appreciating the sorts of questions students actually ask at this level. It is hard to imagine oneself at the start again, and this means that many of the questions Level 1 and 2 students see as basic we have ceased to even recognize as arising. Finally, it has increased the range of our teaching methodologies, not just chalk and talk and the usual run of visual aids. Philosophy is once again becoming interactive. It may not be the kind of interaction that is required, even expected in small groups at Honours level, but it is interactive.

Student Gains

There are a number of clear advantages for students. Firstly, they discover that there is baseline knowledge that they need to understand if they’re going to take the subject further, and as a result of this their confidence as learners has developed. Secondly, they can work at the exercises outside the usual teaching hours, and go as slowly or as quickly as they want. Thirdly, they don’t have to feel anxious about possibly "wasting someone’s time" with questions they fear might be trivial. Finally, tutorial time is freed up to examine questions in a more discursive manner, thus helping to develop students’ dialectical skills. This is a benefit for students and tutors alike.

Overall Evaluation

The evaluation of these exercises has been through anonymous questionnaires that students were asked to fill in at the completion of each of the modules. In general the responses have been very positive, though it is true to say that only about one third of the class filled in this section of the questionnaire. A sample of student responses is included in the sidebar on this page..

Even though only a third of the class has responded on the questionnaires, more than four hundred students have accessed the exercises. I think it is safe to conclude that the exercises have had a good uptake and that students have found them extremely useful. We can also conclude that they have a clear role to play in our future teaching at this pre-honours level.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Our overall aim, over a period of three years, is to produce at least one exercise for each component of every Level 1 and 2 course. This would amount to between thirty and forty exercises. At present we have ten exercises that are currently available to students. So in the next eighteen months we intend to keep on writing new exercises and developing the exercises we already have up and running in response to course changes and student requirements.

Self-assessment exercises are just another way of approaching the course materials. They allow you to test how much you know about part of the course, in your own time and at your own speed. They are assessed, but by an assessment engine that has been set up specifically with your course in mind, and not by a tutor. The questions have a rather limited format of multiple choice and multiple response, but we hope that you will not resort to guessing—that way you will learn nothing.

You work through an exercise and submit it for marking. It is marked automatically, and you get a response and a mark within 5 minutes. The mark is no part of continuous assessment, the exercise is just another learning resource.

Exercises like this are not available for every component of every course, but over the next couple of years we aim to make exercises for all Level 1 and Level 2 courses available in this format.

Health Warning: These exercises are no substitute for reading the texts and attending lectures, tutorials and workshops.