Taking it online: A comparison of online assessment tools

There are a variety of online tools and software applications that you can use to help students create or perform items for assessment, and submit online. Here, we  review some of the tools supported by UTAS.

 

Tool Suitable for… Submission Marking and feedback Considerations
Microsoft Office Creation of a range of documents, from Word Documents, to PowerPoints and Excel spreadsheets. Skype for Business (Lync) can be used to communicate with group members. Files can be submitted to an Individual or Group Submission Folder. Alternatively, they can be shared with other via a Discussion Topic. Word documents can be checked for plagiarism/collusion via Turnitin (e.g. Word Documents). Word documents can be ‘marked’ using GradeMark/Feedback Studio.
  • UTAS students are given access to Office 365 when they enrol.
  • Don’t expect students to know how to use these products to the extent that they can fulfill the assignment requirements. You may need to provide them with mini-lessons or help materials (e.g. recording narrations in PPT files, using styles for headings and table of contents in Word, and creating complex formulas in Excel spreadsheets).
Assignment Submission Folder (individual) Submission of files, including documents, images and videos. Several files can be submitted at once. Can be connected to Turnitin for detection of plagiarism/collusion, but only text documents will generate a report. Mark in the Evaluate Submission area. An electronic Rubric can be attached to the Folder and used for marking and feedback. GradeMark/Feedback Studio can be used to make comments on the students’ work.
  • A connection from the Folder to Turnitin must be established before students start submitting (if you want Originality Reports and/or GradeMark/Feedback Studio).
  •  You can provide extensions to students using the Special Access feature.
Assignment Submission Folder (group) Submission of files, including documents, images and videos. Several files can be submitted at once. Only one member of the group needs to submit, but any member can submit if need be. Can be connected to Turnitin for detection of plagiarism/collusion, but only text documents will generate a report. Mark in the Evaluate Submission area: the feedback and results will be made available to all students in the group. Individual marks can be altered in the Grades tool. An electronic Rubric can be attached to the Folder and used for marking and feedback. GradeMark/Feedback Studio can be used to make comments on the students’ work.
  • Groups must be created (using the MyLO Groups tool) before the Submission Folder is created.
  • A connection from the Folder to Turnitin must be established before students start submitting (if you want Originality Reports and/or GradeMark/Feedback Studio).
  • If some students need to submit individually, put them in a Group of 1. That way, you won’t have the confusion of multiple Folders.
Quiz Low-stakes quizzes/tests and Just In Time Teaching (JITT). Best used as a means of helping students check their progress, especially when feedback is integrated and responsive to students’ answers. Thus, best used during semester, not near the end (unless used to aid exams revision). Generally not suitable as a means of demonstrating higher order thinking. Students must click Submit at the end of the Quiz. Otherwise, their Quiz will be flagged as ‘Attempt in Progress‘ (you can force submission afterwards if need be). Some questions can be automarked, whilst others require manual marking. Marks can easily be published to the Grades tool. Feedback can be delivered immediately, or released from a specific date and time. It is possible to incorporate feedback according to answer choice OR general feedback related to a question. The feedback can be released immediately, or at a later date. You can mark individual questions if needed (e.g. long answer questions), and alter marks for questions manually if need be. Statistics from the Quiz can used when discussing the Quiz questions with students, and are especially useful for identifying areas of difficulty.
  • Setting up an effective Quz can take time.
  • Randomising question order (and, preferably,which questions students) and answer order is recommended.
  • Get ALL students in the class to take the Quiz online, rather than getting some to complete face-to-face.
  • Always test a Quiz before releasing it. It is difficult to alter questions, answers and related marks once students start taking the Quiz.
ePortfolio Students can generate a Presentation (effectively a website) consisting of reflections, uploaded documents and so forth compiled over a semester. Best for assessments completed over a long period, for example, reflective journals and portfolios. Submission must be made to an Assignment Submission Folder. Submission can take a while to process and tends to generate a fairly large file. Mark in the Evaluate Submission area, however, does involve an extra click to open the submission (preferably in a new tab/window). Can be problematic in some browsers. An electronic Rubric can be attached to the Folder and used for marking and feedback. Cannot be procesed through Turnitin, and Grademark/Feedback Studio cannot be used.
  • Students will need training/guidance regarding how to use the ePortfolio tool, and how to put together a Presentation. They will also need guidance regarding how to submit their Presentation to the Submission Folder.
  • It is only worth investing the time in the ePortfolio if the assessment task is to be built up using it over a significant period of time (e.g over a semester).
Discussions Suitable for tasks in which students are required to discuss an issue/come to a consensus and produce something concrete (e.g. a list, with choices justified). Also suitable as a means of supporting collaborative learning. Can be used to support peer review, question and answer, and feedback. For example, students could post a video of their presentation. Other students can view and post questions. Encourage timely contributions by using staged deadlines. For example, first post due by x, responses due by y. You could also include timeliness of contributions as a criteria in a Rubric. Setting up a Checklist with due dates for each task could help facilitate this. Provide general feedback and encouragement at a midpoint in the discussion, as well as towards the end and after deadline. We recommend providing feedback in the Discussion itself by posting to the group and weaving/summarising. For marking, use a standalone Grade Item (on a different window/tab). You can attach a Rubric to the Grade Item.
  • The success of a Discussion will hinge on the task design. Students will need to be very clear about what they are expected to do, by when, any roles they may need to take and the product/output they will need to produce.
  • Ensure that you included elements of effective discussion in your Rubric and, ultimately, in the unit learning outcomes/onjectives.
  • Get ALL students to use the Discussion, regardless of cohort. Students who are shy or have English as a second language often perform better in online discussion (as opposed to face-to-face discussions) as they have more time to comprehend the contributions made by others and to compose a response.
Blackboard Collaborate Ultra Groups can meet live online to discuss projects, or to deliver and record a presentation or discussion for assessment. Alternatively, students can deliver a presentation live, online, to you and other students. You can record the presentation as evidence for assessment. Voice, as well as any objects presented on screen, are captured in the recording. Student groups will need a room created for them. Once they have recorded their session/sessions, they can submit them (with supporting documentation) to a Group Assignment Submission Folder. Live presentations can be assessed live. You can return to the recordings any time. In all cases, we recommend getting students to submit some kind of support material to an Assignment Submission Folder (group or individual), and add the link to a recording to their Comments field. This allows you to use the full features of the Evaluate Submission area to grade and provide feedback. We recommend using the Evaluate Submission area (associated with an Assignment Submission Folder to grade and provide feedback for groups or individuals. Students will need to submit some sort of supporting documentation, as well as link to a recorded session (if required) to support this.
  • You should only require students to present (either live or via a recording) if you are assessing presentation skills as part of the assessment task.
  • Student groups could share their presentations to a Discussion, so that other students can ask questions or provide feedback.
  • It can take time for students to feel comfortable as Moderators in the Blackboard Collaborate Ultra environment. You will need to provide support materials and encourage practice sessions.
Video Students can capture video of themselves (e.g. talking head) for assessment using a range of tools, including MyLO’s VideoNote, their own smartphone or camera. Useful when you want to: assess students’ individual presentation skills; provide an alternative to written reflection. Students will need to submit their video to an individual Assignment Submission Folder. If videos are shorter than 3 minutes duration, they can use the VideoNote tool included in the submission window.  If you want students to share their videos in some way, it may be advisable to put them up to their Echo360 ALP Library and share a link to/embed the video in a post (rather than getting students to attach a large file to a Discussion post). Mark and provide feedback using the Evaluate Submission feature. Note that you will not be able to utilise Turnitin or GradeMark/Feedback Studio (as you can’t mark up video files).
  • Only get students to capture video of themselves if you need to assess some visual element of presentation: use of gesture, for example.
  • Most smartphones, tablets, digital cameras, webcams (associated software), and even laptops have some form of free video recording app included with them that can produce videos.
  • Don’t aim for high production values, but do insist on being able to see the student and hear them clearly.
  • Students may need to get a friend to film them, or use a tripod or selfie stick.
  • File format can be a major problem. Encourage students to submit MP4/MPEG4 files as a preferences. Some MOVs created on Apple products use a proprietary codec that will not work on other brands. Echo360 ALP can usually convert all these video formats.

 

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