Assessments are at the core of student learning. Here’s how you can quickly create and assign reviews at any time of year in less than five minutes!
Assessment can refer to multiple tasks; typical examples include tests, essays, and end-performance projects. Other reviews focus on either “assessment OF learning” (summative) or “assessment FOR learning” (formative).
What is an assessment?
Assessment refers to any process or method by which educators measure and evaluate student’s progress toward meeting or exceeding learning goals. Assessment can take many forms – from informal conversations with children through to end-of-year exams – depending on its purpose.
Diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments exist. Diagnostic assessments enable teachers to gain an accurate picture of student strengths and weaknesses for planning instruction. Formative assessment occurs during teaching/learning processes to monitor comprehension levels as well as provide timely feedback; it helps develop self-regulated learners who have an awareness of their learning needs. Finally, summative assessments seek to measure whether progress has been made toward meeting learning needs by measuring academic performance at end-point estimates.
At the conclusion of any learning period, a summative assessment occurs and typically involves external agencies such as standardized tests or high-stakes exams. Its purpose is to measure all aspects of student knowledge and skills as a measure of overall grade or achievement.
Although a variety of methods exist for assessing students’ academic readiness, learning progress, and skill acquisition, all assessments require criteria, measures, and evidence-driven methods of evaluation. Although the terms assessment and evaluation are often used interchangeably, their distinction should not be overlooked. Although both involve evaluating performance from student performances at various points in time, evaluation tends to focus more heavily on grades. In contrast, assessment involves reviewing classroom components beyond course content or mastery levels.
Standards-referenced assessments (also referred to as standards-based assessments) are assessments based on specific knowledge and skills outlined in local, state, or national learning standards. They serve as assessments that allow teachers, schools, districts, or conditions to measure whether students have fully grasped the material covered. They enable educators, schools, communities, or states to evaluate student performance against such standards.
Interim or benchmark assessments used to monitor student progress throughout the school year may be known as interim or benchmark assessments. They’re administered periodically throughout the year or within specific courses, typically at regular intervals or within particular modules, and focus mainly on measuring students’ achievement of curriculum goals.
How do I create an assessment?
There are a few key points to keep in mind when creating an assessment. It is best to set all settings as desired upon initial creation; some locations, like Suggested First Test for Universal Screeners, must be selected when building the assessment and cannot be changed later.
Begin by giving the assessment a name; this will make it easier to organize your Assessments page and find it again later. Adding an Assessment Tag, which acts like a label to group and filter Assessments later, is also helpful. The next step should be selecting its source – be it uploading files or picking from our Item Bank; followed by setting your privacy settings, which allows for either making this assessment private to yourself only or publicly accessible.
If you are creating a scored Assessment, be sure to include a Correct Answers option so that respondents can be graded based on how many questions they answered correctly. Randomizing question order for learners can further strengthen the validity of your Assessment results as it will prevent patterns from emerging regarding which questions learners answer correctly or incorrectly.
Assessment Details allow you to define an assessment’s Passing Percentage and Language. In addition, you can decide whether or not Respondents may save and continue their answers and whether to enable progress bars on its page for learners.
Setting an overall proficiency for assessments is also essential – this will determine what will appear in any reports that include them. You can specify the minimum score required for completeness as well as whether all questions must be answered in order to calculate an overall score.
Once your Assessment details are set, click the Save button to complete the creation of it. When your assessment has been saved, assigning it to students can begin – they can access and work on it from its designated date until its due date has come and gone, and lock an assignment so students aren’t accessing it after said date has come and gone.
How do I assign an assessment?
Assign assessments through either the Assessments page or directly from any assessment draft. A button with three ellipses next to an evaluation indicates when it’s ready for assignment – teachers, co-teachers, and admins can select it to assign it directly.
As soon as you click this, a pop-up window will open, allowing you to make all the settings for how an assessment will be administered to students. Here, you can set any necessary controls, such as adding password protection and choosing whether or not timers should be included; additionally, you may decide whether this assessment should be visible only to course members or to all.
Next, set the start and end dates for your assessment. Assigning it to classes automatically upon adding start dates, ending it on its last available window automatically submitting evaluations for students, or using availability windows that restrict student access within specific time frames and auto-submit at their endpoints.
First, determine your criteria for mastery and proficiency assessments; if your district is Premium or Enterprise-graded, consider creating a standards-based grading scale so you can quickly and accurately evaluate student responses to this assessment.
Students will also see an optional assignment description when they access this assessment, giving them more details or any instructions you might have for them.
Decide whether or not this assessment requires a grade, or give your students the option of receiving feedback without needing a score from you. This gives them more freedom in receiving their assessment results while you keep their grades to yourself.
Once you have selected all of the appropriate options, click Assign Assessment to move on to the Assessments page, where you can see your list of assigned assessments. To give another evaluation instead, click the blue arrow next to an assessment’s name to open its dropdown menu and select another review from it.
How do I grade an assessment?
Assessments may be graded using various techniques, including traditional tests and papers, rubrics, clicker feedback, performance tasks, minute papers and journals, formative assessment, and manual scoring by instructors. Some types of evaluations, such as an essay or paper formative assessment, might involve manually scoring by an instructor – for instance, evaluating all submissions against criteria from one level and awarding points only to those that meet them; these types of standards-based assessments or assessments for learning might also need manual scoring from instructors.
To begin grading an assessment, select it from the Assigned Assessments module list and open its grading form. It will display submissions of all exam-takers who took the examination in alphabetical order of request; you can scroll or search to locate those you would like to evaluate, and once found, it will display their submission and comments made by other graders on that particular individual. If submitted using Turnitin, Similarity scores will also appear here.
The Grading Form displays the rubric(s) used to evaluate submissions and the scores earned by each exam taker. If a title includes multiple criteria levels, click on each box in the progress circle to assess it by consulting objective descriptors of its performance levels. To add comments below the progress circle or select its speech bubble button at the end of every row.
Once completed, click the Submit button to save and move your evaluation into a list of grades. Grades may appear as points, percentages, or letter grades depending on the assignment type; to give extra credit and award higher scores than listed, type above the line.
Self-assessments or exams that include manual feedback will show any ungraded questions at the top of the grading form, while automated scoring will list them numerically with scores assigned automatically.
