CarmenCanvas Quizzes is a robust tool that allows the embedding of images and videos. Quizzes can be leveraged to build a virtual lab in your Carmen course.
See Adapting STEM Labs for Online Courses for more information about considerations and best practices for transitioning your labs.
Lab components
To build an online lab, create a Carmen quiz with the following major components:
- Prompt: Provide an explanation about the purpose of the lab. You can provide this information along with directions within the Rich Content Editor when you first create the quiz.
- Prediction Question: Provide a question that will ask students to predict what will happen before watching a video demonstration and/or partaking in a simulation
- Info Box: Provide students a video of the lab demonstration or instructions for experiences that you will have them complete using the Text (no question) question ty
- Questions: Ask students to demonstrate understanding through appropriate question types. Be sure to use feedback boxes to give students further information.
Creating the quiz
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Display one question at a time. This will reduce cognitive load on your students by keeping them focused on the relevant chunks of information at a given time.
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Do not set a time limit. By not setting the time limit, if students leave the quiz without submitting, they will be able to come back and pick up the lab where they left off.
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Build a good prompt: Refer to the Transparency in Learning and Teaching project's Transparency Framework of purpose/task/criteria to create your online lab prompt.
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STEM Examples with both less and more transparent assignments:
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Write prediction questions. We strongly recommend that you have students make a prediction via a question immediately before the info box(es).
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Design the lab experience and create the info box: Provide an info box containing embedded existing or newly created lab demos or simulations. You can use question type Text (no question) to embed these videos or links to videos or simulations. Use that question type for each info box you need to make for the lab.
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If students need to make something happen, such as watching and recording bird behavior at a park, write good instructions so that they can do it at home with supplies available to them.
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If students can watch things happen, find a demo such as those provided below or create a demo by recording yourself, lab technicians, or graduate teaching associates completing laboratory demos or experiences. For more information see Info Box questions below.
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Write your questions. Use various question types to assess students' understanding of the experiments and/or simulations.
Info Box questions
How the Info Box questions can be used
Use the question type Text (no question) to create an info box. This question type allows you to break up the questions you ask and provides you ways to update scenario information. Use these for when you want to show something, for example, embedded videos, images, and other visuals, and data sets.
Here are a few examples of things you might embed:
- A lab procedure being demonstrated
- A demo of a phenomenon
- A screencast of a calculation, such as calculating the coefficient of friction
- A link to a simulator for a genetic drift exercise
- An instructor overview to the lab, scenario, or simulation
Continue to create an info box question for whenever you'd like to update details of the lab or scenario, such as when variables change or provide additional information.
Embedding Info Box materials
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To embed a video, use the insert/edit media button in the Rich Content Editor. You can either provide a link to the video or embed the video with an embed code.
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To embed an image, use the embed image button in the Rich Content Editor. You can provide a URL to the image or upload the image to Canvas. Be sure to provide alt text that describes the image adequately.
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To embed a data set, follow the instructions for adding files or folders in the Rich Content Editor.
Assessment questions
Use these for whenever you want to assess student learning. You can ask standard questions that are automatically graded by Carmen, including multiple-choice, true/false, fill in the blank, multiple answers, multiple drop-down, matching, and numerical answers.
You also can choose to use the essay or file upload type questions for open-ended responses, which you will need to grade individually. Consider using these types of questions to allow for students to provide their rationale or to upload their own graphs, datasheets, calculations, etc.
Sample Lab Prompt
We have provided a sample you can copy straight into the rich content editor of your Carmen quiz below.
Overview
Describe the purpose, task, or criteria of the lab in this space. Make sure to highlight the why of this lab: what skill your students will be developing. Note that everything you put on the opening prompt page will show throughout the entire Carmen quiz.
Directions
Outline the steps of the lab here and indicate any special instructions about grading.
An example:
You will begin the lab with a video introduction from your instructor
You will watch video demonstrating a procedure in a lab and be provided the associated data collected from that procedure
You will be asked to complete calculations with that data
You will be asked to generate a graph and do analysis of your findings
Some answers of the scenario, simulation, or lab questions will be automatically graded by Carmen. For those questions that are not graded, I will review your answers to assign the correct points.
If you wish to navigate away from this activity and return later, do not click submit. This way you will be able to pick back up where you've left off.
Resources
Include any resources the students might need to successfully complete the lab like articles from the literature or other videos.
Resource 1
Resource 2
Watch the video below to see a worked example of a virtual simulation in a Carmen quiz. The video does not have audio, explanations are shown using the captions. If you do not see captions on the video, click the CC button.