Assessment: Managing Tests, Projects, and Grade Center
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A Fall 2015 workshop on how to manage tests, projects, and the Grade Center within BlackBoard. Includes tips on how to develop effective tests that measure what they intend to measure.
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Assessment: Managing Tests, Projects, and Grade Center
- 2. Use the Quality Matters rubric and Standards 3, 4, and 5 to help guide your course development Discuss appropriate assessment strategies in your course course and discipline Use a variety of formative and summative assessment methods to maximize your picture of how students are doing
- 3. FORMATIVE Helps you get a handle on how the course and/or students are doing at any given point Gives you a chance to correct something if it’s not going as planned SUMMATIVE Usually done at the end of a unit or course Provides a final look at how things went Determines whether students “pass” or have attained the necessary skills to move on
- 4. Quizzes and tests Discussion forums Rubrics for the creation of: Writing assignments Multimedia (text + images, video, etc) Presentation tools Digital video and audio E-books, wikis, blogs
- 5. This stuff helps you find and create the most appropriate assessments!
- 6. Can be mobile-capable or browser-only Can be supported through Respondus LockDown Browser and Respondus Monitor You can create tests from scratch or import from RespondusTest Generator (or other tools) Test exceptions settings allow different options for different students (like extra time) See https://www.pnc.edu/distance/learn- tutorials/ for all videos on tests See http://www.pnc.edu/distance/respondus for info on downloading Respondus
- 7. Edit theTest Options - check your settings Do NOT turn on Force Completion! UseTest Availability Exceptions for make-ups and accommodations Auto-Submit is ok – forces the student to stop when timer ends Decide on options for how and whether students can receive feedback
- 8. Center forTeaching atVanderbilt: http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/writing- good-multiple-choice-test-questions/ UNC Charlotte Center forTeaching: http://teaching.uncc.edu/learning-resources/articles- books/best-practice/assessment-grading/designing- test-questions Kentucky State booklet on “writing trick questions”: http://www.k-state.edu/ksde/alp/resources/Handout- Module6.pdf
- 9. At higher levels of Bloom’s tests are often not the best measure Consider other ways of gauging learning: Research projects or papers Presentations or debates Concept maps Student-created media (video, audio, etc.) Performances Other products that show learning in action
- 10. BlackBoard discussion, blog, wiki, Kaltura media tools WebEx: http://purdue.webex.com Google Docs: http://drive.google.com Prezi: http://www.prezi.com Bubbl.us: http://www.bubbl.us MS OfficeTemplates: http://office.microsoft.com/en- us/templates/ Screencast-o-matic: http://www.screencast-o-matic.com Jing and Camtasia: http://www.techsmith.com Wordpress: http://www.wordpress.com SimpleBooklet: http://simplebooklet.com/index-edu.php Draw.io: https://www.draw.io
- 11. Need help with the text for your rubric? Try rubric-makers that make your job easier! Rubistar:http://rubistar .4teachers.org iRubric:http://www.rca mpus.com/indexrubric. cfm
- 12. You can grade using rubrics right within BlackBoard Rubrics make your job a little easier when grading more extensive assessments Video tutorials available: https://www.pnc.edu/distance/learn-tutorials/
- 13. When students have a chance to reflect on themselves as learners, they may be more inclined to grow and achieve more Try one of these surveys in class or as an assignment/discussion and see the reaction Felder’s Index of Learning Styles: http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html Biggs’ Study Process Questionnaire: http://www.johnbiggs.com.au/academic/students- approaches-to-learning/
- 14. Use the left-hand sidebar and choose Needs Grading to view when new work has been turned in Alternately, in the Full Grade Center, ungraded work submitted will have a “!” icon
- 15. Allows you to see all grades at a glance – works like a spreadsheet You can create columns for various purposes, including calculated columns Use the Manage button to change column organization Use the “arrow-menus” to change settings, view and edit grades
- 16. Carnegie-Mellon Assessment resource: http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/howto/basic s/index.html Writing good learning objectives: http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/tutorials/id/devel opObjectives.asp Kathy Schrock’s guide for educators: http://www.schrockguide.net/assessment-and- rubrics.html Workshop in scenario-based learning and authentic assessment examples: https://sites.google.com/site/workshopctandsblresourc esite/home
- 17. Tests, Surveys, and Pools: http://help.blackboard.com/en- us/Learn/9.1_2014_04/Instructor/110_Tests_Surveys_ Pools Using assignments: http://help.blackboard.com/en- us/Learn/9.1_2014_04/Instructor/100_Assignments Using rubrics: http://help.blackboard.com/en- us/Learn/9.1_2014_04/Instructor/120_Grade_Center/0 20_Grading/010_Rubrics Using the Grade Center: http://help.blackboard.com/en- us/Learn/9.1_2014_04/Instructor/120_Grade_Center
- 18. Reach us at: pncolt@pnc.edu Twitter and Facebook: @PNCOLT http://www.pnc.edu/distance for all workshop notes, links, and training needs
Editor's Notes
- Welcome to Assessment – all about managing tests, projects, and the grade center within BlackBoard.
- Today we will use Standards 3, 4, and 5 of QM to guide us in approaching the assessment of student learning and interactions. This includes various types of learning assessments, including tests/quizzes, assignments, projects, presentations, and discussions. The idea we should have is one where both formative and summative assessment methods are used to find out whether students are learning, and where they might yet be struggling. In this way, we can take continual “snapshots” of how they are doing over time in the class, and adjust accordingly when we find there are gaps in student knowledge. If we can diagnose issues while students are still with us for the term, there is a better chance that we will be able to help them be their best when it comes time to complete final projects and tests at the end of the semester.
- There are mainly two types of assessment, formative and summative. You may have heard these terms before, but the essentially refer to either assessments that provide an opportunity for correction, versus those that are meant to make decisions about someone’s progress or abilities. In other words, it’s the difference between a chapter quiz versus the final exam. With a chapter quiz in the middle of the semester, students probably receive feedback to let them understand what they need to change about their knowledge or abilities related to the course content, and they’d have the chance to improve for the future. With a final exam, they might still receive feedback, but within your course and those circumstances, that’s it – there is no more chance for them to improve for you.
- There are many tools available for assessment at all kinds of levels, including both within BlackBoard and outside of BlackBoard. We can use technology in all kinds of interesting ways to encourage students to be more creative and provide us with many different ways to figure out if they know what we need them to. A few examples include discussing on forums, producing multimedia, presenting with slides and other media, and creating books, blogs, wikis, journals, and videos.
- Remember Bloom’s Taxonomy of the three different domains? This will most definitely come in handy as you try to determine what kinds of assessments will go along with each of your objectives and related activities. Go back to your objectives and use them as a guide when developing your assessments – you will always be right on target if you use those objectives as your blueprint.
- Tests in BlackBoard can be designed as either “regular” assessments or as mobile-compatible tests, meaning they can be accessed through a mobile device or the BlackBoard app on iPad/Android. This is a great option if you have a lot of mobile users in your class, although be warned that there are far fewer options with mobile-compatible tests, and fewer test choices. You can import tests through Respondus if you wish to set up tests in advance in a Word document and upload them. This is a great option for those converting their tests into an online format, or for those who download test banks from publishers that are not yet BlackBoard-ready. Respondus can be downloaded by contacting Purdue ITAP – see the link in the slide for directions. Note that tests have many options that can help limit cheating and also ensure that all students have equal access. This includes the test availability exceptions, which allow for various exceptions for individuals or groups of students. This is especially useful for those with extra time accommodations, or for those who are making up late work. Lockdown Browser and Respondus Monitor are other tools that can be used to limit cheating. LockDown Browser works best in lab environments, as it limits student access to other applications while taking a test. However, if you are giving quizzes online, you can combine Lockdown Browser with Monitor, a new tool that will be available by the fall to our campus, which sets up video and audio surveillance of students taking their tests. The system prompts the student to go through various actions to prove that they are alone and that they are who they say they are, and then the video of each test-taker is recorded and stored for later viewing by the instructor. Should you have concerns about a student’s test, you can go back to the video at any point to review whether there was any wrong-doing going on.
- Some tips for giving successful tests in BlackBoard include checking your Test Options very carefully. Above all, avoid turning on Force Completion. This idea sounds great – it limits the student to taking the test in only one sitting – but the problem is that if the student’s Internet connection fails for any reason while taking the test, the test is forced to conclude. This means that students who legitimately lost their connection cannot continue with the test, and they will contact you frantically asking for a reset. They cannot return to their test in progress, so they would have to start all over again if you chose to allow them to go back to the test! This can be very unpleasant for all involved, so the rule of thumb is to avoid Force Completion all together. Test Availability Exceptions, as mentioned before, can be wonderful for make-ups and accommodations – just set up your conditions for any student who needs it. Auto-Submit is a good option that you may wish to turn on, as it forces the quiz to submit even if the student runs out of time on a timed exam. Otherwise, when the timer runs out, the student may still continue if she is not done with the test. Finally, take note of the options for receiving feedback and ensure that you are giving students every chance at feedback that you wish to give them at any point in time. By default, no feedback other than the score is provided upon submission, but you can choose to give students an overview of the correct answers or the entire test, either right away or after all other students have finished the exam. Note that if you do choose to only release feedback after everyone has submitted, this will include any student who did not take the exam. You will need to manually assign them a grade of 0 for a missing assessment if you wish for BlackBoard to release the feedback under that condition.
- Here are some very useful resources on designing good tests and test questions at all levels of Bloom’s and more.
- Sometimes, of course, an objective test does not really match up with what is being measured. This is particularly true when you’re dealing with complex tasks and skills that require higher-level thinking skills. While you can certainly develop test questions that correspond to every level of Bloom’s Taxonomy, it is not always that easy to accomplish this, or to grade such questions. And, it allows for more variety and flexibility when you introduce projects, papers, presentations, debates, and other types of performances into your classroom, of course, which helps engage students at different and often deeper levels.
- Some cool tools that may be useful to you and to your students include BlackBoard’s various tools, WebEx for live collaboration, Google Docs, Prezi, new templates from Microsoft that add more spice to your presentations or papers, Screencast-o-matic or Jing/Camtasia, Wordpress, or SimpleBooklet. These are all tools that students can use freely to promote their own learning, and they often require minimal knowledge or effort from you. These tools can all be figured out by students pretty easily, so giving them some options and letting them “run with it” is not a bad way to go about things. Try it and see what happens!
- In order to grade things like papers, projects, and presentations, you’ll probably want a rubric. A rubric is a comprehensive way to grade, because it provides you with objectives and observations to look for in a student’s work and compare to a standard view of what is “good.” This makes the act of grading much less subjective, as can often happen with things like presentations and multimedia. When students know what you’re looking for, they are much more likely to perform where you want them to, and it takes the mystery out of learning. No student likes to be held to standards that they don’t understand. Providing rubrics and good objectives will help with this. Some great example rubrics and information about them can be found here. BlacKboard even has a nice tool for creating rubrics and applying them to assignments, discussions, and other items students can turn in to you.
- BlackBoard rubrics take some of the pain out of scoring projects, because you can just click the little bubbles by each performance a student makes and it totals up their score for you. You can even apply the same rubric to multiple assignments or discussions, so if you score everyone the same way on every discussion, for example, you do not have to create new rubrics every time. Rubrics can also be imported and exported between courses, so they can be shared with your colleagues who might teach the same or similar activities.
- A great activity to try to is to ask students to reflect on their abilities and tendencies as learners. This often goes over well as an “icebreaker” kind of activity at the beginning of a semester. It can be incredibly eye-opening for them to look at themselves and their study habits and it might even spur them to action to improve their study skills. It is also simply great for classroom conversation, and can help students see themselves in a little more of a mature way. I have an electronic version of the Study Process Questionnaire in Qualtrics that I am happy to share with anyone who needs it.
- You can access work that is ready to be graded through the Needs Grading option under the Grade Center tool in your left-hand toolbar. Optionally, you can go into the Full Grade Center and look for work with an exclamation mark by it – this work will be submitted but ungraded. Click on the arrow next to the exclamation mark to Grade User attempt or activity as needed.
- The Full Grade Center allows you to see all grades at a glance in a spreadsheet-like view. You can actually enter items into the gradebook just like a spreadsheet, in fact – simply click in a box and enter a score, then hit Enter to save the grade. This is just one way of grading work, and necessary for any manually entered columns you may have. You can create new columns for all kinds of purposes, such as work that was submitted in class rather than in BlackBoard, or for special calculated columns like special percentage columns, letter grades, and more. BlackBoard will do a fair amount of calculations to your gradebook data, including weighted percentages, dropping highest or lowest grades, and other useful tricks. See the resources at the end of this presentation for specific tutorials. You can use the Manage button to organize all of your gradebook columns as well, and the “arrow menus” by each column name and within each cell of your gradebook include options for editing, sorting, and getting statistics as needed.
- Here are some more useful resources on assessments and rubrics, including Rubistar which will help fill in the blanks for you in creating rubrics and take even more pain out of the process. Yes, creating rubrics and authentic assessments does take a little more time than the traditional testing route. However, it is well worth it when you consider how much more your students will be able to do as a result of your course in the long run!
- These links take you to in-depth information on the various tools in BlackBoard, hosted at the help.Blackboard.com website.
- Please contact us and visit http://pnc.edu/distance for all workshop notes, links, and training needs. Thank you!