Schoology: Enhanced Assessments
Why Bother
The goal of any worthwhile assessment should be to give your students the best possible avenue(s) for demonstrating their understandings. Most teachers would not argue that point, yet many balk at assessments that fall outside the rigid confines of traditional approaches — multiple choice, short answer, essay, etc. Are we really then to believe that these forms always represent the best possible options for our students?
To be clear, this post isn’t here to suggest that all traditional assessment types be thrown away “because it’s the 21st Century.” If the focus of a lesson or unit of study is writing, then a typical written response type of assessment is obviously appropriate. If you want your students to demonstrate an understanding of something they’ve just read, then short answer questions may provide the best avenue for them to do so (although I might argue recorded oral responses would be equally valid). And if that understanding you’re after is related to the nuances of bubble darkening, then multiple-choice is indeed always going to be your best bet. However, consider how often your assessments aren’t aimed at one of these particular skillsets. Are there other types of questions that would better meet your learners’ needs, and could these question types themselves promote deeper consideration of the subject matter?
That is where Schoology’s new bevy of “enhanced assessments” (<- torture-lovers, enjoy) come into play. These question types harness the power of technology to allow you to quickly and easily probe a bit deeper into your students’ understandings of the content.
Enhanced Question Types
I’ll outline the specific question types below, but before I do, take a look at the overall assessment options that can also support your students’ learning:
As you can see, this new assessment toolbar allows teachers a bit more flexibility in the tools that students can use during assessments. Even something as simple as the “eliminate answer choices” option can be quite beneficial for a number of students.
Label Image: Maps, charts and graphs, pieces of art, parts of sentences, parts of equations, parts of anatomy…every discipline loves their labels!
Highlight Image: Show your work in math, circle a specified part of any image, diagram a sentence, draw the missing parts of a cell structure, annotate a piece of music.
Highlight Hotspot: Use it in similar ways to the highlight or label image options, except that students simply tap the area of the screen that corresponds to the correct answer.
Highlight Text: Grammar analysis, primary source document analysis, TDA’s, source analysis. Make the kids show you their evidence with a simple tap of the screen!
Math Short Answer: Math teachers rejoice! It is now infinitely easier to have your students show their work on Schoology with the bevy of new math-related tools available here! You can select from a number of different mathematical keyboards for your students to use.
Number Line: Drag and drop answers/labels onto the line. Math teachers, I don’t need to tell you all about number lines; Social Studies teachers, consider using this to show chronology!
Chart: Bars, lines, plots, dots, histograms, and more — setup a variety of different charts for your students to manipulate in order to reveal their understandings! This could also he used for recipe conversions or health data measurements.
**As of now, these new assessment types can only be accessed via the web version of Schoology and not the mobile app.
