Try using some of these digital assessment tools with your class this year

Submitted by Fiona Beal
There are different types of assessment methods that we use in our classes on a regular basis, depending on the assessment task at hand. Do you use any didital tools to carry out these assessments? In this post I’ll share a few ideas of some useful tools. But first, let’s review some types of assessment

Types of assessment

You are probably familiar with all of these:

1. Summative assessment: This type of assessment aims to estimate the learners’ success in meeting the learning criteria set out in a particular subject or module.

2. Formative assessment: These are the varied methods that teachers use to conduct evaluations and collect information about their learners’ understanding, learning needs and progress in a subject during the lesson.

3. Interim assessment: This is a way of evaluating a learner’s performance at periodic intervals, often at the end of a topic.

4. Performance assessment: This is a form of testing that requires learners to demonstrate the skills required by a task rather than simply answer questions about the task.

5. Diagnostic assessment: This is a way a teacher determines a learners’ current skill set, knowledge and capabilities so as to inform future lesson planning

Digital assessment tool ideas

Some of these forms of assessment can be more easily met by using digital tools. It all depends what devices are available for your learners to use.

1. Create rubrics for formative assessment

Rubrics as a less subjective way to assess tasks in formative assessment settings. You can create rubrics using free tools such as Quickrubric (http://www.quickrubric.com/)

Rubistar (http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php), and irubric ( ) Here is a video that demonstrates how to use Rubistar.



2. Use Google Classroom to gather assessments

If your learners can do their assessments using online digital tools, and if they have email addresses the use of Google Classroom is a great way to present differentiated tasks to a class and collect and grade their assignments for summative assessment tasks.   You don’t  need to be a GSuite school  in order  to be able to do this. Googls Classroom is freely available to anyone with a Gmail account. Your learners would also need to be have a gmail account.  This video demonstrates how simple this is to collect assignments.


3. Quick Feedback sites

Feedback is said to be a vital part of assessment. John Hattie, Professor of Education and Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia, believes that feedback is one of the top 10 influences on student achievement. Electronic quizzes are a great, fun way to assess formatively with instant feedback. Try using Kahoot (https://kahoot.it/ ), Socrative (https://www.socrative.com ). Flipquiz https://flipquiz.me for example. This video shows how to use Quizlet which is a free website which enables teachers and students to create digital flash cards. Quizlet can also automatically generate interactive games and even tests of the material you enter into it.



4. Audio feedback

Audio is a great, quick way to give feedback. S Word allows audio comments to be embedded within a document.  Educational Technology and Mobile Learning has a useful post outlining 6 steps to add voice comments to Google Docs. I haven’t tried their suggestion, but one of the ways I  like to add voice comments is Google Docs is via a Chrome extension  called Talk and Comment.. This works really well. Watch this video that explains how to do this.






5. E-portfolios for performance assessment

Have you thought about letting your learners create e-portfolios? Some teachers use Google Sites (https://sites.google.com/ ) for this, and each learner has their own Google site which they use as an electronic portfolio. Blogger can also be used as an e-portfolio site.

6. Diagnostic assessment using Google Forms

One can create all kinds of tests such  as spelling tests etc using Google Forms. You can also get Google forms to grade certain types of quizzes.  The following video shows how to do this.

This is just a brief introduction to  all the different ways you can assess digitally.  Didigtal assessment has so much potential,

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