Blog : Quizzing, Polling and Assessment Tools

Tool: iRubric

Website: www.rcampus.com/indexrubric.cfm

Rating: 

iRubric is a tool for developing and sharing rubrics that is part of the collaborative learning environment called RCampus. It lets you create a rubric from scratch and also modifying an existing one. Moreover, iRubric allows you to collaboratively assess rubrics.

Usage

Although their webpage is not the more visually appealing this tool allows you to easily develop, assess and share rubrics.  It has a public gallery of rubrics organized by grade levels, subjects and types. It can be really useful and allows its users to have a rubric ready to use after only a couple of clicks. Individual educators and students can use iRubric for free. However, with iRubric Enterprise Edition they provide flexible licensing and hosting plans (They let you request more information about it).
As iRubric is a web-based tool you only need an internet connection and a profile in order to use it. However you can visualize the rubrics from their gallery even if you haven’t logged in.

Review

Using iRubric you can build, customize, assess and share your own rubrics in a really simple way. In addition you can have your own collection of rubrics and edit, print or send them by email.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Testportal

Website: www.testportal.pl

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Testportal is a web service dedicated to creating online tests and. For teachers the tool is available for free, however with limited facilities. Additionally, there is a possibility to have the paid account. To view the paid offers go: https://getpocket.com/premium?ep=1. Each paid option is available as a 30 day free trial.

Usage

Testportal allows user to create tests with varying number of questions. Questions can be randomly chosen to objectively test students. Tests results and statistics are available for the author.  The tool is easy to use, however has limited facilities in free version.

Review

Access to the service is available via browser and requires an internet connection. The user is obligated to create an account.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Survey Monkey

Website: www.surveymonkey.com

Rating: 

SurveyMonkey is an online survey development cloud-based (“software as a service”) company. SurveyMonkey provides free, customizable surveys, as well as a suite of paid back-end programs that include data analysis, sample selection, bias elimination, and data representation tools. In addition to providing free and paid plans for individual users, SurveyMonkey offers more large-scale enterprise options for companies interested in data analysis, brand management, and consumer-focused marketing

Usage

SurveyMonkey is primarily a survey tool and as such is not particularly suited for in class tessing or polling (there are better tools available for this), however it has a variety of uses in an education environment including:

• to assess family/school relationships.
• to evaluate online learning programs or undertake school climate surveys.
• to measure University student satisfaction, or Course evaluation feedback.

Review

Survey Monkey offers more of a feedback and survey function for those in education, for this reason it is not the most useful tool in terms of an  in classroom educational tool. It can be very helpful for providing guidance about educational performance, opinions and about the school environments in general.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Poll Everywhere

Website: www.polleverywhere.com

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Poll Everywhere is an easy way to gather live responses in any venue: conferences, presentations, classrooms, etc –  using SMS, web, or Twitter. Overview

Usage

Response systems can increase student engagement and participation by giving all students a chance to respond, as opposed to only the few motivated or outgoing enough to raise their hands, during whole-class questioning. Results from past polls or quizzes are stored on the website and can be associated with student names. This allows teachers to track each student’s performance over time.

Review

Poll Everywhere is an affordable tool that allows students to respond to questions from a teacher using almost any device. Teachers create accounts on the Poll Everywhere site and create quizzes. Students then go to the website to answer quiz questions or send text messages to a specific code number. Teachers can project questions on a screen and can even view or display poll results in real-time. Poll Everywhere allows for frequent and immediate formative assessment.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Ombea

Website: www.ombea.com

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Ombea enables teachers to enhance their presentations by adding interactive slides or side bars to engage students. The tool can be used to assess students, track attainment, elicit opinions or engage parents by using interactive features that pool students reponses to questions of a varied style. The software can be used on mobile devices or laptops as well as through “clickers” that pole the responses.

Usage

Ombea is used as a polling and interactive student resource. It works by allowing educators to add interactive slides to their presentation from simple questions to more advanced group questions, it then allows the group to answer with their mobile device and finally it collects the data and analyses it. Ombea provides extensive reports on the data and stores all data so that it can be used by students to monitor their own individual results, the educators to monitor class performance and trends and the head of departments to monitor things like class attendance and performance.

The tool is relatively easy to access and use. It gives educators powerful insight into how students are performing and allows them to access these stored reports as reference. The tool allows students to operate this tool on smart phones when connected to a network and also gives them the change to monitor their performance easily throughout the year.

Review

“OMBEA has been a great maths resource but also a useful cross-curricular tool. It’s also great for feedback in line with the 1/2/3 system we have in place to encourage self-assessment and to identify and address any particular misconceptions. It’s fantastic for data handling and compiling data to use with the class. Overall it’s a great piece of kit and I love that we can tailor it so easily!”
Claire Constantopoulos, William Barcroft Junior School

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Socrative

Website: www.socrative.com

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Socrative aims to help teachers to asses and engage their students. It provides instant insight into levels of understanding through the use of real-time questioning, result aggregation and visualization. Socrative is free and does not have a premium version available for extra cost. It also has apps for both teachers and students which are optional and can be downloaded for free.

Usage

Many educators have indicated that it is appropriate for any grade level and that it is quite easy to use for both teachers and students. Socrative is an online application so it can only be used while connected to the internet. For a teacher account, one needs to provide some personal data in order to get a free account. Students however are not required to introduce any personal data, they only have to introduce the Room Code into the corresponding field.  It is possible to create different types of questionnaires including short answer, true or false and multiple choice. Moreover as a teacher you can download results into excel or google sheets in order to manipulate them. Teachers can share their quizzes allowing their reuse without the work involved in creating them.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Nearpod

Website: www.nearpod.com

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Nearpod lets you present, quiz and report synchronously with students.  The Nearpod platform enables teachers to use their Tablet (or laptop/PC) to manage content on students’ mobile devices. It combines presentation, collaboration, and real-time assessment tools into one integrated solution. Nearpod requires one Tablet or PC/MAC and at least one other device (tablets, smartphones, Chrome books, PC/MAC), both running Nearpod. All devices should be connected to the Internet. The pricing varies, the SILVER Edition (FREE) provides up to 50MB of storage space, up to 20MB of presentations and up to 30 students per live session, web & Twitter support options, PDF reporting. Upgrading to Nearpod GOLD, offers more storage space (up to 3GB), larger file uploads (up to 40MB), more students per session (up to 50),  additional interactive features (add audio slides, add twitter timeline, and insert web pages in your presentation), and student self-paced feature (Nearpod homework.)

Usage

Teachers use Nearpod to share content with their students and to manage the flow of the lecture. Students use Nearpod on their mobile devices to receive multimedia content and to participate in engaging assessment and collaboration activities.

Review

“Nearpod brings learning to life in my classroom! It’s such an easy tool for me to create an interactive presentation for my students. It easily creates Interactive lessons, delivers real-time assessment and operates smoothly across all devices.”- External reviewer

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Quizdom

Website: www.quizdom.com

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Qwizdom offer a range of student response system hardware options (sometimes known as clickers, voting systems or audience response systems), as well as Qwizdom Virtual Response (QVR), which is a  downloadable response app allows you to transform any Web-enabled device into a student response system, clicker and voting tool which allows access from anywhere with a web connection to facilitate remote learning. The pricing for this tool is not clear but indications are that the kit cost is quite extensive. However it is a one off cost that is worth the initial investment.

Usage

1. Easy to Implement- Easy-to-use tools and software, whether using student response hardware or Qwizdom Virtual Response (QVR), along with the technical support we offer ensure that teachers are up and running quickly with limited need for training.
2. Immediate Feedback- With student understanding assessed and viewed instantly, instructors are able to adapt teaching as needed, reaching more individuals and maximizing learning.
3. Grading & Reporting- Instant grading and printable reports allow teachers to efficiently relay student progress to parents and administrators. This frees up time for more engaging classroom activities.
4. Performance Tracking-Qwizdom Action point software enables you to generate individual or class reports for performance summaries. Allowing you to monitor and track student progress and understanding across topics, subjects or across the school term or year.
5. Reduces Expenditures- Using a Qwizdom Student Response System or Qwizdom Virtual Remote (QVR) along with computer-based presentations or resources means a reduction in printing costs and waste.

Review

I’d recommend it to other teachers because it can revolutionise the teaching and learning in your classroom. I have pupils racing to my classroom from their previous lesson – I’m sure that wasn’t always the case in the past. I have to admit I was surprised at the students response. I thought that the younger pupils would enjoy it but that it would have limited credence with the older pupils. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Every class that I’ve used it with from Y7 though to Y13 has thoroughly enjoyed their learning using Qwizdom. The worst thing about Qwizdom would be setting up class lists and getting the pupils to log on using their numeric ID numbers. If I’d judged Qwizdom on my first use of it, I wouldn’t have used it again. However, once you’ve used it with a class a few times and they know the sequence of events involved in logging on, it all runs smoothly. -Schoolzone Review

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Kahoot

Website: www.getkahoot.com

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Kahoot! is a free game-based learning platform that makes it fun to learn any subject, in any language, on any device, for all ages.

Usage

Using a simple and speedy ‘drag n drop’ creation tool, educators create and manage ‘Kahoots’ in the form of quizzes, surveys or polls related to the topics they’re teaching; either asking quick questions ‘on the go’ to get feedback or opinion, or more in depth questions for formative assessment. Content can be shared with learners, colleagues or fellow educators globally. Questions, along with answer choices, are projected onto a classroom screen while students submit responses using a personal (likely mobile) device. Playing a game of Kahoot! doesn’t involve an account, just a game PIN from the main screen and a name. However, making quizzes (termed “kahoots”) does involve entering user information

Review

In real-time and with gaming elements to increase engagement and motivation, learners answer questions through their personal devices. Educators get an overview of the current knowledge levels of everyone in the room, and can adapt their teaching accordingly. Either collaboratively or individually, and motivated to gain a deeper knowledge of specific topics, learners are challenged to create their own Kahoots in the form of quizzes. Through their personal device, learners think up and answer their own questions through thorough research and the collation and/or creation of imagery and video. Their learning is reinforced by thinking up potential wrong answers to questions, as well as the correct ones. Learners share their new found knowledge by playing their Kahoot back to other learners. Educators assess the quality of questions they are asking, whilst the other learners answer the questions through the powerful classroom engagement tool.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: No More Marking

Website: www.digitalassess.com

Rating: 

No More Marking is an e-learning tool which utilises the concept of comparative judgement applied  to marking and grading student tests. Comparative Judgement is a way of marking that uses comparisons of quality instead of using absolute judgements in quality. As humans we are good at comparing things, hence by using this approach to marking – by making comparisons of pairs of items – it is possible to get a very reliable scale and build up a measurement scale.

Usage

No More Marking can be used to judge any pieces of comparable work. It works very well with material such as English and qualitative based exams. This method of marking saves time and makes the process much more interactive and according to reviewer reports gives a very accurate depiction of how well a student is performing and overall how well the teacher is performing. It is relatively simple to use this software. The work needs to be uploaded, sent to the assessors/markers, then judged and finally the results can be downloaded. One drawback of this e-learning tool is that it does require extra effort in putting all papers online. Also as it is a new tool that it hasn’t received much support/exposure from the education sector to date, though it remains one of the most innovative and promising approaches we have seen though out this whole study.

Reviews

Ireni Thalassinos, Head of English, Lewisham Southwark College
At Lewisham Southwark College we have an unprecedented number of GCSE entries due to recent policy and assessment reforms. This year we are expecting to enter around 600 students for GCSE English. The scale of the entry means that setting and marking a mock examination is quite a major operation. We decided to use a Comparative Judgement approach to reduce the burden of marking from the GCSE English mock examinations and to ensure that staff working across disparate sites with different cohorts were all applying the same standards.
The 20 GCSE English teachers then gathered for a judging session. It was clear from the start that everyone was engaged in the judging. Indeed Shoshi, the GCSE co-ordinator said that it was rare to see teachers so enthusiastic about marking!
‘I feel less isolated in the marking process’ (Karen )‘For the first time I can actually say that I enjoyed marking and have no doubt that our students will be awarded a fair grade’ (Toyin)

Tool Evaluation