The Learning Managment System - Question Banks

For welding I am a firm believer in teaching students construction math, tape measure reading, welding symbols and a whole host of topics that are not taught in the weld booth burning rod. I am by no means downplaying the value of students being able to deposit sound weld metal in a weld joint as that is pretty much the whole point of welding. 

The importance of the academic side of welding can also not be understated either. The LMS (Learning Management System) has become a routine part of most high school course curriculums. The following is a definition of the LMS.

A learning management system is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, automation and delivery of educational courses, training programs, or learning and development programs. The learning management system concept emerged directly from e-Learning.~Wikipedia

In regards to the LMS and welding there are a few different directions that one can go in regards to the learning management system and finding course materials for your class. 1) you can put your head in the sand and pretend they don't exist. 2) you can use the free materials produced by the American Welding Society and other groups 3) you can build your own.

I am not a big proponent of #1 - as far as option #2 getting prefabricated course materials - I didn't go that direction because I didn't know such a thing existed when I started teaching and I also like to have control over my course content top to bottom inside out.

So once you start teaching you are going to have to give the students some type of quiz or test, and for that you are going to need some questions. So where are these questions going to come from? Unless you are using an off the shelf product like I mentioned above, you are going to have to make up some questions and eventually build yourself a "Question Bank".

You might be asking yourself - "What the heck is a question bank and why do need one?" If you think of a question bank like your normal bank account where you put money. A question band has a similar function you deposit your questions into the question bank and then go and withdraw them when you need them for exams and quizzes. A question bank allows you to create, copy, preview, and edit stored questions. Question banks can store questions within categories like welding symbols for example. The questions stored in the question bank can be reused in different quizzes and lessons over and over and over. Depending on the LMS questions from quizzes might be added automatically to the question bank.

Before we go too far down the question bank rabbit hole I am going to throw another term at you.

Incrementalism - Incrementalism is a method of working by adding to a project using many small incremental changes instead of a few large jumps. Logical incrementalism implies that the steps in the process are sensible. Wikipedia

I am a firm believer in Incrementalism - no need to build the end all be all of welding questions banks overnight. Build it as you go and before you know it you will have a solid amount of questions to work with. And realistically speaking how many questions are you going to need to do a really solid job teaching Welding I and Welding II? Maybe six or eight hundred?

Six or eight hundred questions sounds like a lot but by the time you cover welding safety, Oxy Fuel cutting, construction math, SMAW, GMAW, FCAW, blueprint reading, welding symbols and how to act like and adult in the work place, you are going to hit that mark and then some.

There are a number of different places where you can go to find some questions. For a Welding I course you are probably going to spend the first two weeks talking about welding and shop safety. Do a google search and you should get a number of examples of questions that you can use for your quizzes. 

 If you are not familiar with the US Navy and the Nonresident Training Course (NRTC). These are self-study packages or courses designed to help a student acquire Navy professional or military knowledge so they can move up in rank. So the USN has ships and does construction on land with the SeaBees so it would make sense that they are going to have to have people who can weld, which means that they are going to have to train people to weld. Hence we have these correspondence courses with lots of questions in the back of the book.

Two of my favorite sources for questions are Nonresident Training Courses on welding, Steelworker, Volume 1 NAVEDTRA 14250 and NAVEDTRA 14119 which is for Hull Technicians. Both of these courses are jam packed with information on welding. And it is all in the public domain meaning that it is not copyrighted material - go berserk and copy and paste to your hearts content.

Getting back to quizzes and questions for the students nothing says that you have to have new questions every for every quiz. Like I said before I teach welding like it is a language, which means that I ask the same questions over and over and over. Welding safety questions for example I want them to know that material like the back of their hand and the only way to get there is repetition. 

So this idea that you covered welding safety and you can only ask the students safety questions is a false narrative. Math and basic fraction questions are a great way to get the most bang for your buck. For example if I am covering a chapter on "Welding Safety" there is nothing that says I can't sneak in half a dozen questions on adding and subtracting basic fractions. I look at it like throwing rice or mashed potatoes in as a carbohydrate with dinner, something cheap that adds a filler to the main course.

Before we get too far along I should probably throw out my theory on the academic side of welding. I really believe in starting out day one giving an assignment. Nothing big or soul crushing in terms of length of the assignment or in the level of difficulty. I just like to give them something to let them know that my welding courses are going to have some content and are not just two hours of screwing around and making sparks.

So how do I set the tone for the course from the very beginning? I give the student a short quiz with the online LMS - learning management system. I do this by giving a five or six question math quiz day one or day two as the start of the fall semester. A lot of student freak out with fractions so my theory is to go slowly and ease into it. Some examples would be.

1/2 + 1/2 = 1 

1/8 + 1/8 = 1/4

Something that they can chew through pretty quickly and it doesn't freak them out or cause them to quit or completely give up. For those of you who have not taught high school students in the Career and Technical areas like welding, you will be stunned at the math deficits that some student have. So it doesn't hurt to go a little bit slow. I know as I am explaining this it sounds like it is a "no brainer" but it took me a couple of years to get to this point because I came in with the expectation that most students would be crushing fifth grade construction math. This is not the case so go slow and easy with the math unless you are sure that your students can handle it but the key is to have some math from the start.

So you have a few math questions and a few safety questions and a general direction on how you are going to be building your question bank for the rest of the course.