Amy Berchem shared how she deals with administering assessments over a split period (their lunch occurs in the middle of class):
I am giving a test during a split class. I want to maintain the integrity of my test while the students are eating. So, I add the "save and exit" feature so when we break for lunch, everything is saved because the students save and exit. Then, I make the test invisible to them so they have no access to it while in the cafeteria. Upon entry to my classroom after lunch, the test will again be made visible. Is there an easier way to do this so that I maintain security and integrity of my test?
Does anyone see any issues with this?
To me, it looks like an elegant solution that requires minimal effort and keeps the teacher from being forced to open the item and edit it.
Is there a better way of doing this?
Thanks for all the help, ideas, and suggestions.
Comments (5)
Hey Jeremy, I personally do have a couple of suggestions.
Randomize the assessment, use variables, and question banks
This would require some significant curriculum development, but may lead to the most unique and safest assessments.
Use assessment passwords
The toggling of the visibility likely has to happen after all of the students go to lunch. Alternatively, you can change/add the assessment password right after they begin taking it. After they save and attempt to reopen it, they would then need to get the new password to be able to continue their attempt. This could also limit it to only the students that were present in the class.
I push suggestion 1 whenever I can. It's the ideal.
But that wouldn't solve the issue here b/c she doesn't want the students working on the assessment unsupervised during lunch.
I like what you are suggesting for the assessment passwords, but it flies in the face of what one of the techs advised the other day when I reported an issue. He suggested that it was ill-advised to edit an item while students were actively working in that item. I pushed that out as a recommendation to the staff today so I'm guessing that is part of why Amy is holding this up as an alternative.
Let me know your thoughts on that.
Thanks,
Jeremy
As a disclaimer, we are about 6 weeks into our first year using this platform, so we may be missing a setting somewhere. That being said, I think our issue may be related to this.
Background... we have the post tests password protected, the 'save and exit' is enabled, and the domain setting is set to log students out after 15 minutes of inactivity. All students have their own Chromebook issued to them for the duration of their high school career.
Situation... We think we are seeing students start a test and maybe not finish before the end of the period, so instead of 'Save and Exit,' they are closing their Chromebook with their test taking tab in the browser still open. The issue arrises the next day when students open their Chrombook to the browser tab, they enter their login password and are able to continue where they left off on the post test. Looking at the "activity" record, no student has tried to finish the test at home, but this situation seems to allow for that.
In a perfect situation, if they get logged out due to inactivity, we would want the test password to be reentered before they could continue.
We do stress to them to use the save and exit feature but occasionally one has slipped through the cracks in the rush at the end of a period. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Rick Huddlestun
Could you set a due date for the end of the class period? That should prevent anyone from working on it outside of class. If you wanted someone to finish the next day, you could remove the due date or add a grace period.
If you were just worried about someone working at home, you could make the assessment invisible at the end of the day then make it visible again the next day. If students try to open the assessment at home when it is invisible, they should get an error message. This inadvertently happened to my students when another teacher made an assignment invisible in the master course after my students had already started the assignment in class.They got errors when trying to complete the assignment from home until I noticed the visibility change and fixed it.
I'm not sure how that would conflict with Jeremy's comment about not changing things the students are working on. The assessments should be all closed at that point though.
Thank you Bruce, we will try your suggestions and see if they will work for our situation.