Buzz: Questions & Answers

Retries on "Formative Assesments" and impact on Excused activities

Follow
Answered
Meri Tunison

Hello! Currently, we have Credit Recovery courses set up to utilize the following for unit pre-tests and testing out of certain material:

  1. Align specific questions to specific lessons/assignments and ensure those are tagged appropriately (using the Objectives functionality)
  2. Set pre-test as "Formative Assessment" and "Include formative in final grade and show score to students"
  3. Set pre-test to use the Last scored attempt

This setup works so that learners can take the unit pre-test and based on their responses, they may test out of any of the applicable lessons/assignments for that unit. That being said, we've noticed an issue that comes up if a learner is provided a Retry on the pre-test and scores lower than the first attempt. For example, this is a scenario that could come up if there were academic integrity concerns and the learner needs to retake the pre-test under supervision.

The issue is that when a learner's NEW score on the pre-test is lower than the previous attempt, it does show up in their Gradebook but it does NOT un-excuse the previously Excused activities. Compare this to when a learner originally scores very low on the pre-test, but then retakes it and scores higher - then it does excuse any appropriate material based on the latest score.

Is it expected functionality that a lower Last score on a formative assessment would not remove the Excused lessons/assignments from a previous attempt? Or should the new attempt at the formative assessment similarly change the Excused lessons/assignments based on the new score no matter if it is lower or higher?

  • Course ID you can look at: 236489226
  • Unit in which the pre-test original attempt was higher and the second attempt was lower: Writing with Style
  • Unit in which the pre-test original attempt was lower and the second attempt was higher: The Art of Arguing
  • Ignore the first unit "Literary Essentials" as I was also manually editing individual questions and etc so I wouldn't use that as a good example of this issue.

Screenshots from our test learner for the first attempt scoring high and the second attempt scoring low:

 

Thanks for any insight!

Comments (2)

Sort by
Date Votes
Trevor Williams
  • Agilix team member

Good afternoon, Meri!

Please note that the two scenarios described are expected outcomes. Excusing activities is contingent on passing the formative assessment.

  • If a student’s first attempt passes, excusals are applied.
  • If a subsequent attempt is lower or below passing, Buzz does not retroactively remove excusals.
  • If a student’s first attempt fails and a later attempt passes, excusals are applied based on the second attempt passing.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any other questions about this!

0 Comment actions Permalink
Meri Tunison

Hi Trevor,

Thanks for the quick reply. I think Buzz should reconsider this functionality - I think it makes more sense to retroactively remove excusals if the formative assessment is set to Last score attempt and the retry score is lower; specifically when considering increasing concerns about academic integrity and needing retries to be accurately implemented.

That being said, I think I have figured out a (somewhat complex) workaround:

  1. Teacher allows retry and waits for learner to submit it
  2. Teacher reviews the new Pre-Test score in the learner's Grade Editor window, specifically the Objectives tab to see which lessons/content were not passed on the Pre-Test (thankfully, this tab does reflect the most recent submission and doesn't seem to combine scores!)
  3. Teacher Un-Excuses those associated graded assignments the student needs to address.
  4. Then the teacher will also have to follow up with the student and let them know they need to go un-check their Buzz profile Setting for "Hide Excused Activities" because the lessons themselves will still be marked as Excused and the teacher can't change that in any manual way -- unless I am missing something?

Thanks for your input!

0 Comment actions Permalink
Please sign in to leave a comment.