New Freehand Drawing question type for Moodle

The quiz question type ‘Freehand Drawing’ has been added to the set of existing visual question types in Moodle. Freehand Drawing questions enable the simple and intuitive creation of digital freehand sketches/text mark-up on either a blank canvas or an uploaded background image. Once a sketch has been submitted tutors can, optionally, add their own markup as feedback .

One good reason for choosing Freehand Drawing over other question types, such as Drag & Drop or Multiple Choice questions, is that students have to actively create their responses, rather than just recognise predefined answers as correct or incorrect. This facilitates assessing deeper levels of knowledge and understanding. Furthermore, students don’t have the opportunity to simply guess the correct answer.

Good practice when using Freehand questions:

• In the question statement, clearly define what you expect from the students in order to achieve full marks.
• Calculate enough time for answering the question. Freehand Drawing questions generally need more time to answer than single/multi – choice questions. It’s good practice to complete the question yourself and see how long it takes you; double this time at least to get a fair estimate of how long it would take a student.
• Familiarise students with the question type in good time before using it in any form of assessment
• Freehand Drawing questions must be marked manually. It’s good practice to prepare a sample solution or an assessment scheme to ensure uniform assessment especially if there are multiple assessors.

A guide for the creation/use of Freehand Drawing questions may be found here: https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/x/7hN2Cw