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Saving time by using Moodle auto-grade function #42

The prevalence of English education focusing on single sentence translation exercises and grading mainly grammar and spelling mistakes has resulted in students who are unaccustomed to create a meaningful composition with logical organization. However, often in real life, minor grammar and spelling mistakes are ignored or forgiven, but not having a structured composition could cause misunderstanding or failure to convey real meanings. Therefore, in preparation for using English in the real world, writing composition exercises are a crucial part of English study in college education. Furthermore, when students attempt to write or speak their own sentences, they could notice and learn the grammar (Swain, 1985). However, reading students’ composition, grading and giving feedback are very time consuming parts of an educator’s job, especially when he or she has a large number of students in the class. Fortunately, with the help of technology, this could lighten the workload and save precious time. In this presentation, the auto-grade essay function in Moodle is introduced to assist with grading students’ composition. Mainly, simple word counts can help to grade the students work when it is combined with sentence and paragraph count. The teachers can focus on organization and structure of the writing rather than grammar and spelling mistakes. This presentation intends to introduce some useful Moodle functions to those who are new or still learning to use Moodle. Also, suitable types of assignments and tests are discussed along with some useful functions to guide teachers.