Instructional Design: How to write an elearning tutorial style quiz to advance scientific computing in your classroom

Wednesday, Thursday 8:30am-11:30am University of South Carolina
Workshop

Conveners

Gillian B Haberli, EarthScope
Tammy Bravo, EarthScope

This workshop empowers STEM educators to create tutorial-style quizzes that simultaneously teach and assess scientific computing skills. While computational thinking is essential across disciplines, many instructors struggle to integrate these skills without overwhelming students or without having developed the skills themselves. Our workshop addresses this challenge through the innovative use of tutorial style instructional quizzes that break down computational concepts into manageable, scaffolded learning experiences. Participants will engage in a highly interactive experience including:  Hands-on exploration of exemplar computational quizzes,  Guided identification of "computational moments" in their existing courses,  Collaborative development of learning objectives and assessment strategies,  Building their own tutorial style quiz in an LMS,  Peer testing and feedback sessions,  Data-driven refinement of questions,  Implementation planning for their specific teaching contexts.  This workshop bridges pedagogical theory with practical application. Participants will leave with ready-to-use tutorial style quizzes, enhanced technical skills, and strategies to progressively build student computational confidence.

Intended Audience

Instructors who recognize the importance of computational skills but struggle with effective integration into their courses. We will help them train up these skills for classroom implementation.

Goals

By the end of this workshop, participants will:

  • design and implement tutorial-style quizzes that teach while they assess, aligned with learning objectives using backward design principles.
  • create authentic, discipline-relevant computational assessments that introduce scientific computing progressively through low-barrier tasks.
  • write instructional feedback that scaffolds learning and normalizes productive struggle.
  • leverage LMS analytics to evaluate and refine quiz effectiveness.