In schools or learning processes, mostly learners are required to read information. The information can come from books and other materials. In this case, reading the information is easy and everyone surely can read. However, learners have responsibility to understand what they have read. When it is only to simply read the texts, it will be useless if they do not understand. Even, they should remember core points of information provided by the texts. When these happen, the learning process can be considered successful. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to make sure that learners read comprehensively and understand the texts properly. Thus, knowledge is needed.
A knowledge check is used to “check” if the learner has read the information. Knowledge check becomes process to check and make sure that learners have read the texts and they understand the points. In most cases, they can be checked by answering questions given by the teachers, lecturers, or tutors. However, those questions are given in the end of the texts. These are common but these will be less effective to check the comprehension and knowledge earned by students during the reading process. Thus, knowledge check uses different approach by giving questions in certain sessions in the midst of the texts.
Knowledge check is given in questions. The questions are not given in the end of the texts, but the questions are given in the midst of texts. The lecturers or teachers place the questions strategically in certain sessions and learners should answer the questions if they want to continue reading the texts. For e-learning, this will be useful where mostly students are not accompanied by teacher in class. Unless they answer the question correctly, they will not be able to continue the next sessions. The knowledge check are not recorded and scored because mostly it is to check knowledge and comprehension that learners have gained from the texts. It is only a method to make learner read texts seriously so they will not forget or miss the information that they have read.
As what is mentioned above, the knowledge checks are given to ensure that learners really read the texts and they also can understand what they have read. For e-learning process, this is very important because some students may be reluctant to read texts and they cannot be checked directly because the learning process is not conducted in the classroom. Thus, knowledge checks will be useful to know whether the learners read texts or not. Then, having the questions of knowledge checks make learners engaged in the learning process. Learning process will not be passive because they will also need to answer questions and this becomes way for them to get engaged with the contents and knowledge provided by the teacher.
In this case, students can have different types of questions for knowledge checks. It depends on the teachers and it may also depend on the types of texts that learners should read. For the simple and basic information, True/False becomes the most basic question to answer. Then, they can have multiple choices to check understanding. There can also be questions that require students to fill in the blank and this can be questions that can test their logics or further comprehension.
