Prof. Gordon Bateson Kochi University of Technology (Japan)
Gordon Bateson is Professor at Kochi University of Technology in Japan. His research interests include developing Moodle plugins to support extensive reading, writing and speaking. He has a degree in Software Engineering from Imperial College, London and an M.Sc. in Teaching English for Specific Purposes (TESP) from Aston University, Birmingham, U.K. He has lived and worked in Japan since 1990. Currently, he is researching technologies to facilitate the assessment of online speaking and writing activities.
Whilst there are numerous online tools to test and assess the receptive skills of reading and listening, it is only recently that tools have been developed to assess the production skills of writing and speaking online. Internationally-recognized tests, including TOEFL, TOEIC, IELTS and Eiken, are all available online nowadays and most include speaking and writing sections. However, the use of human assessors means that the fees for taking these tests are high, and furthermore it takes several weeks the obtain results. To overcome these issues, a new open-source test is proposed that is based around the Moodle LMS. The test features several new plugins to automatically grade speaking and writing. The presenter will detail the development of the plugins, reveal the preliminary version of the test, and explain how the reliability of the test is verified by comparing students' scores with human-ratings and widely used tests.
In this workshop, participants will learn how to build an online tool that can automatically assess an individual’s ability to read, write, listen and speak in English. The tool will be created with the Moodle learning management system (LMS). At the beginning of the workshop, participants will be introduced to Moodle and guided how to build an online course. The presenter will also explain how to create and import images, audio, and video into Moodle. Within the Moodle question bank, students will create questions to test reading, listening, writing and speaking ability. These questions will then be added to a Moodle Quiz activity, which forms the basis of a 4-skills test. Finally, participants will try out each other’s quizzes and consider the advantages and disadvantages of this method of assessment.