Online educational technologies are gaining speed year by year. Students get more and more convenient with them, and paper testing is losing its importance and necessity when we talk about knowledge evaluation.
Learning management system, question-answer and feedback tools - all these digital instruments are aimed to provide students with fast and fair assessment directly after taking a test.
Why digital assessment is better than paper testing?
There are lots of reasons to use educational technologies for student assessments, such as saving time, making the learning process more comprehensive and friendly, getting fast feedbacks, etc. But the main advantage is the order in a classroom.
For example, Unicheck plagiarism checker Google Docs Add-on allows students not just avoid accidental and self-plagiarising, but check the property of marking citations and references. The students can precheck their assignments before submitting that makes their work more independent and save teacher’s time for the actual grading.
No more stacks of papers on a teacher’s table, no more lost tests, no more need of taking all assignments home for check.
Digital assessment eases the lives of teachers and students, so they may focus on a test itself without bothering themselves with preparations.
Besides, due to modern technologies learners may take initiative considering their studies without interrupting each other. All their activity can be tracked by a teacher on the spot.
Having digital testing is a real fun for students, fun which brings positive results to their studies. Working with the interested audience makes teaching easier and more desirable for learners.
Digital assessment tools
Gamifying the answering. One of the most popular instruments for digital assessing is Kahoot! This gamification platform helps teachers to build learning process in a form of a game by creating multiple choice questions or using already existing games. Though every student needs to have a personal computer to pass the test, this is a great group activity, as all questions are transmitted to a shared screen and may be discussed if needed.
A teacher may upload media files and images to create a unique game, as well as download ready-made stuff.
According to feedbacks of US teachers, Kahoot! provides with 100% engagement in the class, as students totally plunge into the competition atmosphere willing to win the game.
The ideal solution to get a brief and to-the-point feedback from a group of learners is the AnswerGarden digital assessment tool. This simple online instrument is devoted to the quick question-answer interaction between learners and a teacher.
After an educator has created and shared a question to the class, students may start tying the answer or choose it among various suggestions provided by the teacher. The speed of data collecting is really impressive, but unfortunately, AnswerGarden has limited online time.
It should also be noticed, that AnswerGarden doesn’t fit for all types of questions. For example, teachers should avoid those, which are too long, as they imply even longer answers.
Giving instant feedback. Great tool for free staff lovers is Socrative. This software is equipped with multiple activity types, which may be used for different subjects and goals of educators. Among possible activities, there are quizzes, quick questions, exit tickets, etc.
Socrative has an intuitive colorful interface, easy in use, and apps for both students and teachers. The tool allows educators to analyze learners’ results in a real-time by getting instant feedbacks. Quizzes may be created in seconds and shared with other teachers.
Tracking the progress. Plickers is another real-time educational software allowing to get data for an assessment? This is a comprehensive tool helping a teacher to understand where the students exactly are in terms of progress.
Though Plickers is a serious instrument for digital assessing, many students consider it to be a fun game, what makes studying process even easier.
The results may be seen in two mode types: student’s and graphic. The graphic mode allows a teacher to see the way learners make their decisions, while student’s mode help to track what they answer or miss.
Assigning the survey. Widely-used survey-kind tool for student assessments is Google Forms.
Google Forms allows creating questions with possible answers even if exam should start in few minutes. Images and even videos may be uploaded to accompany the survey.
Teachers may also add collaborators to their Google Forms and collaborate on the survey together. Besides, the tool is free and will greatly serve for any type of a group.
To sum up
There are various digital assessment tools that serve different purposes in educational environment. Those of them helping to avoid plagiarism in student writings are highly important as well. Teachers will find these tools useful, as they will help them to track the progress that students make, and provide them with more objective feedback and final grade.
