The goal of Poodll WordCards is to help students learn words. For that purpose we want them to practice words that they do not know, until they do know them. Then they have "learned" the word. How do we do that? And how do we know when a word has been "learned."
Correct Associations and the Learned Point
Poodll WordCards has a number of practice activities, including "Listen and Choose", "Listen and Type" and "Choose the Word." In each of these activities the student must select / type / say / choose or shoot the correct word. If they do this successfully they have made a "correct association." Poodll records each correct association a student makes against a word.
In the Poodll WordCards administration settings, and in each WordCards instance, there is a "Learned Point" setting.
This setting tells WordCards how many correct associations of a word makes it "Learned." So if the Learned Point for a word is 5, after the student has completed practice activities using the word successfully 5 times, the word is "Learned."
NB The tracking of word learning is only performed for students. Teachers' learning is not tracked. To test the word learning features, teachers should first switch their role to student.
How do we know which words are learned and which are not?
Students
On the main page of a wordcards activity in steps mode, or on the definitions page of a wordcards activity in free mode, there is a list of all the words. Beside each word there is a small learning progress bar. When the word is learned there is a check in place of the progress bar, and the word is labelled "Learned."
Teachers
On the reports page of a wordcards activity there are two relevant reports:
- Terms Learned - The learning progress of each term by each user in the activity.
- Terms Learned in this Course - The learning progress of each term by each user in the course.
Using these reports teachers can track the word learning progress of their students.
What happens when a word is learned?
When a word is learned, Poodll will usually not present it to the user for practice or review in practise activities. However It may still use the word, for example, when there are not enough non-learned words left to make the activity.
Word Pools and Learned Words
There are three pools of words in WordCards
- New Words - the words introduced for the first time in this activity.
- Review Words - the words introduced earlier in the course.
- My Words - words that the student has selected for self study
It is not necessary, that students practice words until "learned" in the same wordcards activity that the word was introduced. By using the review words pool and my words pool, words can be reviewed over time. The tracking of learned words behaves the same regardless of the word pool. ie Correct associations are counted, and learned words are less likely to appear in practice activities.
In free mode the student can choose from which wordpool they wish to study.
In steps mode the activity author selects either "practice" or "review" for each step when choosing the activity. There is no my words option in steps mode. In Step 1 of the activity only practice mode is available.
Self - selecting Learned Words
It is wasteful of time and energy for students to practice words that they already know. So there is a special type of practice activity called "Word Preview" - this allows students to preview the words and self-select words that they already know from the list of the words. Those words will then be marked internally as learned, so that they are less likely to appear in practice or review sessions. Immediately after self-selecting words, they students will need to do a matching activity to confirm that they do in fact know the word. If they successfully match the word it will be marked as learned.
The Word Preview activity type appears in the list of activities to be chosen in Step 1 by the activity author.
