The duration of the lesson is 90 minutes. Together with two brakes the maximum time for exam is 110 minutes. In the class there are 18 students. I expect that 16 of them participate on exam. It means that for each student I can spend 5 or 7 minutes. The average duration for exam per each student is 6 minutes – 5 minutes for interview and 1 minute for process management.
Because the time for exam is so short and because I have so many issues to investigate the exam process must be well prepared and planed.
Goal of the exam – interview:
1. To find out does students know how to use the tagcloud method for knowledge construction and information visualization?
2. To investigate does the tagcloud method helps them to build the knowledge? Do they have deeper knowledge in project management field thanks to the tagcloud.
Comment: The first goal can be checked based on exam recordings. The second question stays without answer because it’s impossible to declare is the deeper knowledge thanks to tag cloud or because of some other activities and methods we used during the course?
Unfortunately I cant control the wider scope of learning experiment – do teacher prefer tagcloud or concept map for project management knowledge construction and what effect this preference? The reduce of the scope was effected by lack of the time. We did not had time to create concept map of project management.
During the exam I try to find out:
1. Can the students handle the tagcloud?
2. Can they find the answers to the simple questions about project management wit just watching and browsing the tags in tagcloud (without opening the content related to the tags and reading it)?
3. Can they find answers to the complicated questions related with project management field by finding the relevant tags, opening the content related to the tags and reading the content?
During the exam it’s important to monitor:
1. How reasonable is the behavior of the students? To they know what are they doing or they don’t have any glue.
2. How much time they spent for finding the answers (time in seconds, number of the mouse clicks, number of the hints provided by the teacher)?
For collecting this information it’s vise to record the student’s behavior and the activity on computer screen. Later this information will be analyzed.
Preparation of the exam
1. Get overview of student’s tagclouds (how many bookmarks, tags, groups). Print this information on paper. This will be the starting information in exam.
2. Create and print out the schedule of the exam – student names and starting times. The examination order will be based on number of the tags.
3. Recharge the battery of the video camera.
4. Format 3 mini DVD’s for video recording.
5. Download, install and practice with screen recorder (CaptureWiz).
6. Purchase the computer mouse and plug it with laptop computer. During the exam only one computer is needed. For this purpose the teacher’s laptop will be enough. To increase the students performance, the mouse (instead of touch bad) will be used.
7. Check the availability of the ordinary classroom and the internet connection in this room. Also the lights in this room are important because of video recording.
8. Set up the room and equipment (tables and chairs).
Software development idea: During the overview of the students tagcloud it appeared that its very easy to get overview how any bookmarks student has but the number of tags is not presented. New learning environment should give statistics about how many tags are there (per student and total). This can be the basis for quantitative analyze and evaluation.
During the testing of the equipment and software it appeared that there can be some problems with screen recorder software. The recording will be in AVI file format. The full screen size recording will create very large files. The free size of hard disk is not enough. Second problem is the duration of file recording. This will shorten the time that can be spent for interviews. For reducing the file size and saving time:
1. The frame rate of the recording was changed to 1 fps.
2. The size of the computer screen was changed to 800*600 pixels.
3. The size of the recording area was set to 800*408 – del.icio.us web page in IE browser without browser buttons and address area (hopefully this does not affect the quality of stored data).
4. The sound is not recorded.
5. Still the image quality should be average or higher. Otherwise its not possible to read the recorded information visually.
6. For 90 minute long recording the free size of HDD is approximately 300 MB. This is acceptable. For saving the 5 minutes long recording the saving time is 25 seconds. This is not very good. It means, that the saving must be done during some other activities – e.g. when students are leaving or entering to room. It ads some extra pressure and stress for exam management.
Environment
For exam are needed:
1. Classroom – ordinary room no 225.
2. Computer – only one computer is needed – teachers laptop. Teachers personal laptop is preferred because then there is no need to ask permission for software installation (only administrator can install the software to the school computers).
3. Computer mouse – Teacher’s computer does not have mouse. For increasing the speed students performance the mouse is needed.
4. Internet connection. Preferably connection wit cable. All content is in Internet.
5. Video camera – teacher’s personal camera for recording the student’s behavior. Camera records videos to mini DVD’s.
6. Screen recording software – for recording the activities on screen.
7. VLE’s del.icio.us, Google Docs, LeMill.
If Internet connection or del.icio.us veb site is down then the exam will be canceled.
Procedure
1. For time saving reasons the del.icio.us environment will be opened before the beginning of Exam. Login is done under teacher’s name. Students can browse their personal tagcloud through network functionality.
2. Students are asked to give to their tagcloud the view what is most suitable to them (claud or list, ordered by alphabet or frequency, filtered by tag frequency or not, grouped or not). Students must explain why they prefer that kind of view? Before each new student the view of the tagcloud must be traditional. Comment – I did not have time to do that. So students so the view of the previous user. 
. Software Development idea: The default view button would be nice to have.
3. One question about tags – What tag (except project and project management) is the best characteristic to the project management field? Why this word is important in project management field? The goal is to check is this choose affected by the size of the tag (most frequently used tag)? I expect that they will choose the most frequently mentioned keyword. Beforehand I will predict what word they will use, and then I can analyze the differences.
4. One question about grouping the tags. What was the logic behind the grouping the tags? Where did you get the names for the groups? Why those tags belong to that group? If the tags are not grouped, then why.
5. Two questions from project management field. First question is easier and the second one harder. Those questions are below.
6. Feedback questions:
a. How do you like learning method where you have to describe the content by separated words? Maybe you prefer some other method e.g. longer sentences, graphical pictures, ect.
b. How did you prepared for examination? (I did not do anything, I was reading the content, I was adding the tags, I was correcting the tags, I was grouping the tags)
c. How much time did you spent for preparing to examination (in hours)?
7. If time allows then from some students I will ask how successful was the teamwork? What problems accursed during the teamwork? Why the team kicked you of? Did you managed to go back to the team? What was the problem during the project manager selection?
The main goal of this exam is to collect information about usefulness of the tagcloud during the knowledge creation process. unfortunately the educational roll of the exam is very small. E.g. it would be very good to let other students to see fellow student presentation. Then they can learn on this experience. The other solution is team exam or interview. In this case smarter students can teach dumber ones. But the main goal was to investigate the students personal knowledge not the knowledge of team.
Alternative questions about tagcloud:
1. How the students understand the meaning of tagcloud?
a. Why this word is bigger then others?
b. Why this word is smaller than others?
c. What word is most important in your tagcloud and why?
2. Does students understand different ways to present the tags?
a. Why you prefer to present tags in cloud/list?
b. Why you prefer to sort tags in alphabetical/frequency order?
c. Why you prefer to present only the most popular/all tags?
d. Why you prefer to present the tags in grouped/not grouped way?
3. How the students see the connections between tags?
a. What was the logic behind the grouping the tags?
b. Why those tags belong to this group?
4. Does tagcloud method suits to student?
a. How do you like the method to describe the content of the material with separated words?
b. Do you prefer some other method?
5. How the skill of using the tagcloud and the scope of the knowledge is affected by the student preparation to the exam?
a. How did you prepared for examination?
b. How much time did you spent for preparation?
Questions about project management subject
To find out how deep is the students knowledge the questions have different difficulty levels. To simplify this process the taxonomy of Bloom was selected. It’s important to mention, et Bloom’s taxonomy is only used for grouping the questions not for measuring the students performance.
1. student know – list, define and recognize “things”
2. student understand – summarize, describe with own words
3. student can use – implement, use, change, solve
4. student can analyze – sort, see the differences, compare, create systematical order.
5. student can synthesize – combine, integrate, restructure, create
6. student can evaluate – decide, choose, test, measure
Knowledge
What is project?
What type of project do you know?
Is the marriage project?
Are the weddings the project?
What type project is the participation at ferry?
What type project is the development of the AIDS vaccine?
What are the phases of project life cycle?
What is the project scope management?
What is the project time management?
What is the project cost management?
What is the project human resources management?
What is the project risk management?
What are the project stakeholders?
List the techniques for generating the ideas.
What is the SMART rule?
What is the project charter?
What is the WBS?
What is the Gantt chart?
What is the budget?
What describes the organizational chart?
What is the RAM?
What is the SWOT analyze?
What is the risk matrix?
List the risk response strategies.
How to find the response actions to the risks?
What is the probability?
Understanding
What are the common characteristics of the projects?
Why are the common goals of the project in contradiction?
What important event is between the project planning and the project execution phases?
What type organization is your project team?
Who are the project stakeholders?
Describe the brainstorm method.
Describe the 635 method
Why is important that the project scope is measurable?
Why is important to divide project scope in to smaller deliverables?
What is the meaning of the arrow between two bars in Gantt chart?
How to collect information about risks?
Why is important to describe the risks with their probability and affect?
Why is important to present progress reports during the project execution?
If during the project execution tasks begin later or last longer then planed it acquires the shift of the all schedule. Why the shifted tasks must move back to their original places ASAP?
Why is recommended to organize meetings before noon?
What is the normal reporting schedule for project?
Implementation
It’s not possible to check the implementation skills with short questions.
Analyze
From what the project are born?
What is the first phase of the project?
What is the difference between project scope and quality?
What is the difference between project process and project deliverable quality?
What is the difference between the project cost and price?
What is the difference between fixed and variable cost?
What is the difference between avoiding and reducing the risks?
What is the difference between backup and fall back plans?
Synthesis
What are the problems of your project?
What are the fixed costs of your project?
What are the variable costs of your project?
Ask relevant question from teacher – Comment: we did not had time to do that.
Evaluation
What kind of characteristics you have – important to the project manager?
What important rolls in your team are not covered?
What rolls in your team are not important?
Before the exam I browse through all the tagclouds of the students and selected questions suitable to them. It helps reduce the time spent. Its also important that tags help students to find answers to my questions. Then I can control is the tag cloud helpful or not?
The first (simpler) question is related with specific tags that are in student’s tagcloud. I expect that they can find the tag and answer to my question. The second question is much more difficult. Tags in tagcloud do not refer directly to the answer. The answer can be found with the help of the tagcloud.
