Please, let ME help YOU: Answering Your Assessment Questions
Derek Nichols
Blackbaud Employee
With many schools quickly approaching exams, finals, mid-terms and other test style activities, we've put together a list of our most frequently asked Assessment questions and answered them. Enjoy!With semester finals and mid-terms looming in the not too distant future, we want to call attention to our Assessments feature. Assessments have become an integral part of a lot of online classrooms and we know teachers can run into a few issues with them. We thought we would address some frequently asked assessment questions:
Should I publish an Assessment I haven’t finished building?
Please do not publish your Assessment until you have finished building it! As soon as an Assessment is published, students can access it even if you haven’t finished adding questions to it. We are aware that the publish option defaults to Now and we are looking to update this default to No in the future but for right now, you must select No for Publish or make sure to set an assigned date in the future when creating your Assessment.
Otherwise, students can access the assessment as you are building it. For example, if you have only created three of your ten questions when a student accesses the Assessment, they will only see those three questions even if you continue to build out the Assessment after they have accessed it.
Can I give a student extra time on a timed assessment?
If you have a student with a 504 or IEP plan that requires extra time on tests and quizzes, you can provide additional time for them on timed assessments. Once you have set a Time to complete for an Assessment, you will see an Adjust individual student times link. You can use this link to provide students with additional time. Once you have added these individual student times, students will appear with their times under the Time to complete field for an easy way to double check your changes.
Why does it say Allow Continue for a student?
Allow Continue will be available if the Student lost access to their assessment due to their internet connection, from the system crashing or timing out, or if they navigate away from the assessment after they start it. Allow Continue will allow the student to pick back up where they left off and any answers that have been saved will still be completed.
If multiple students have lost connection to an assessment, use Allow incomplete students to continue at the top of the Assessment details page to allow all students with an Incomplete status to continue their assessment. If teachers are using Allow continue a lot, they can also setup their Assessment with Allow save for later which will let the student continue their assessment without teacher intervention.
What is the difference between Allow Retake and Allow Save for later?
Allow save for later allows a student to close out of the Assessment and then reopen it at a later time with all of their previously supplied answers still captured in the Assessment. Allow Retake allows a student to take the assessment again after they have already submitted an attempt.
We also see a lot of issues where teachers confuse Allow Save for later with multiple attempts. If a teacher has enabled multiple attempts on an Assessment, each time the student selects Take Again, they will be given a new instance of the Assessment. This means if a student accidentally submits an Assessment without completing all their questions, if they select Take Again, they will not return to the previously submitted Assessment, they will be taken to a completely new instance of the Assessment and their previously supplied answers will be overwritten by the new Assessment. You should always remind your students that Submit means the Assessment is being submitted for grading and Save/Resume means they are still working on their Assessment.
Where can I view assessment results? Are questions automatically graded?
From your Assignment center or Assignments tab in your class, you can select the Assignment title to view a list of student submissions. Select Results for a student to see an individual student’s answers. Multiple choice, True/False, and Fill in the blank question types will be automatically scored, but the scores can be overwritten if needed. One thing to keep in mind with Fill in the blank questions is to not use commas when providing multiple answers. The system does not know to parse the commas out of the answer. Any essay questions will be listed as Awaiting and you will need to provide a score for these questions.
Can I copy an existing assessment?
Teachers cannot copy existing assessments. However, teachers can import their assessments from one course to another using the Import option from the Assignments tab and using the available filters to find the Assessment they would like to import.
We hope that we have been able to answer some of your questions about Assessments. We also recommend taking a peek at our updated Assessments guide which also will walk you through creating your Assessment.
Have a question that we didn't answer above? Drop your question in the comments section below if you have more questions about how to make Assessments work for your classroom!
Should I publish an Assessment I haven’t finished building?
Please do not publish your Assessment until you have finished building it! As soon as an Assessment is published, students can access it even if you haven’t finished adding questions to it. We are aware that the publish option defaults to Now and we are looking to update this default to No in the future but for right now, you must select No for Publish or make sure to set an assigned date in the future when creating your Assessment.
Otherwise, students can access the assessment as you are building it. For example, if you have only created three of your ten questions when a student accesses the Assessment, they will only see those three questions even if you continue to build out the Assessment after they have accessed it.
Can I give a student extra time on a timed assessment?
If you have a student with a 504 or IEP plan that requires extra time on tests and quizzes, you can provide additional time for them on timed assessments. Once you have set a Time to complete for an Assessment, you will see an Adjust individual student times link. You can use this link to provide students with additional time. Once you have added these individual student times, students will appear with their times under the Time to complete field for an easy way to double check your changes.
Why does it say Allow Continue for a student?
Allow Continue will be available if the Student lost access to their assessment due to their internet connection, from the system crashing or timing out, or if they navigate away from the assessment after they start it. Allow Continue will allow the student to pick back up where they left off and any answers that have been saved will still be completed.
If multiple students have lost connection to an assessment, use Allow incomplete students to continue at the top of the Assessment details page to allow all students with an Incomplete status to continue their assessment. If teachers are using Allow continue a lot, they can also setup their Assessment with Allow save for later which will let the student continue their assessment without teacher intervention.
What is the difference between Allow Retake and Allow Save for later?
Allow save for later allows a student to close out of the Assessment and then reopen it at a later time with all of their previously supplied answers still captured in the Assessment. Allow Retake allows a student to take the assessment again after they have already submitted an attempt.
We also see a lot of issues where teachers confuse Allow Save for later with multiple attempts. If a teacher has enabled multiple attempts on an Assessment, each time the student selects Take Again, they will be given a new instance of the Assessment. This means if a student accidentally submits an Assessment without completing all their questions, if they select Take Again, they will not return to the previously submitted Assessment, they will be taken to a completely new instance of the Assessment and their previously supplied answers will be overwritten by the new Assessment. You should always remind your students that Submit means the Assessment is being submitted for grading and Save/Resume means they are still working on their Assessment.
Where can I view assessment results? Are questions automatically graded?
From your Assignment center or Assignments tab in your class, you can select the Assignment title to view a list of student submissions. Select Results for a student to see an individual student’s answers. Multiple choice, True/False, and Fill in the blank question types will be automatically scored, but the scores can be overwritten if needed. One thing to keep in mind with Fill in the blank questions is to not use commas when providing multiple answers. The system does not know to parse the commas out of the answer. Any essay questions will be listed as Awaiting and you will need to provide a score for these questions.
Can I copy an existing assessment?
Teachers cannot copy existing assessments. However, teachers can import their assessments from one course to another using the Import option from the Assignments tab and using the available filters to find the Assessment they would like to import.
We hope that we have been able to answer some of your questions about Assessments. We also recommend taking a peek at our updated Assessments guide which also will walk you through creating your Assessment.
Have a question that we didn't answer above? Drop your question in the comments section below if you have more questions about how to make Assessments work for your classroom!
4
Comments
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Thanks, Derek - this is helpful. What about the Extend option? There have been lots of issues with it and I know if I send my teachers this FAQ, they will ask about it. Last I heard, it was working but there was a specific set of steps needed to be successful.0
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Hey Susan Ott, glad this is helpful! So to answer your question, the linked Assessment guide in the blog post lists out the specific steps needed under the Allow Continue, Retake, and Extend section. Essentially, teachers would need to select Extend then enter the number of days in the available text box.
The guide also covers extensions in conjunction with Allow Retake as well, should any questions arise about that. Hope it helps!0 -
One point of clarification. Where it says "One thing to keep in mind with Fill in the blank questions is to not use commas when providing multiple answers. The system does not know to parse the commas out of the answer." this means in the individual answer text. As the system will then parse at every place it encounters a commas a new answer. You DO have to separate the possible answers with commas.0
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I consistently lose an entire assessment while typing in questions. Once I leave the assessment and return, I have found that my test has disappeared. This has happened more than once when I have left the assessment to continue adding to the test. It has also happened when I have completed the test, hit "preview" to ensure that the images are all there and was taken back to the "add questions page." All my work was gone. What can I do to avoid this loss of work? I am afraid to use the assessment feature for fear that I will make a 65 question test and then lose the whole thing. Please help me out. Thanks.0
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That's an interesting one, haven't come across that myself. So when you're entering questions and you want to stop, you select "Back to Assignments" and you don't see the assessment inside of the Assignment Center? Double check your filters as well, perhaps some of the settings that are enabled are filtering it out of the list?
If everything looks as it should, I'd probably recommend reaching out to support as there's likely something strange going on.0 -
I set a 2-hour timer for my students and if that timer has run out, it does not give me an option to extend that time for them. Once a student has submitted an assessment, I can't "Allow to Continue" to give them more time. I want to have them pick off where they left off. Is there a way to allow them to continue even if they've submitted it or run of the timer?
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Hello:
My students completed a quiz with no issues. However, when I changed the date to allow a student to make up the exam, the student could not access the quiz. On my end, I saw this message: Note: Students will not be able to start the assessment until questions are added and the assessment is marked Ready for taking. This has never happened before. I appreciate any help you can provide. Thank you
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