ExamView and Summative Assessments

I use the phrase summative assessment very loosely because as long as my class and I have some time together, they can continue to improve upon weaknesses.  But with most of my assessments covering one skill at a time, there may be a need for assessments that check for retainment of concepts (ie. benchmarks, finals, etc.)  Now that I have created assessments for each skill, I want a way to create assessments that combine multiple skills and, ultimately, culminate into and end-of-course-test.  Fortunately, I don't have to re-create the wheel. 

The process is actually pretty simple. 

Export Skills Tests to an ExamView Question Bank
Simply take an existing test and export as a question bank.  This will allow you to use these questions in the creation of future tests. 

Choose Method for Selecting Questions
For this test, I chose to select questions while viewing.  I have a good idea of which skills/standards I want on the test, so I want to be able to look at the question before selecting it. 

Switch Banks to Select Questions
Now that I can view the questions, I just need to be able to switch from one question bank to another. 

And...

Done!
Did I mention, that I'm kind of a fan of this thing?

The Process

I currently use an augmented version of our school's assessment system. All of our teachers are using standards/skill based grading allowing for re-assessment, but because of the technology I have available in my classroom (ie. class set of laptops), I can do some things that my colleagues can't.

Skills List
The system all starts with the skills list. This isn't news to you because if you're reading this blog, you're most likely reading dy/dan as well. Our district made the move towards standards based instruction a few years ago with some of our campuses throwing out the textbook pacing and teaching a standard at a time. We have decided to go one further and break up the thicker standards into smaller more manageable skills. Each student gets a skill list where they keep track of their progress. They also have a "playlist" where they set goals for the week.

Online Examples/Study Guides
I spent the better part of the last two years populating our school website with examples. They have been organized by text section, state standard and soon, I will have them done by skill. Many of these were recorded during class and are the result of student generated questions. I hope to upgrade these examples so they are a little cleaner. The study guides are simply .html exports of the ExamView tests I have created. In hindsight, I think I'll go back and make all the study guides short answer as opposed to multiple choice. I have found that too many student won't show work otherwise.

Ideally, I would like the skills to be just that, skills. I want my students to access these study guides and examples on their time which would free up class time for projects and problem solving. Based on conversations I've had with my 7th graders, they are realizing the power of being able to access these resources at their convenience which gives me confidence that a classroom inversion is more likely next year. It's tough to have them unlearn certain behaviors, but because my classes are really a two year program, I see much growth the second year.

CFA
Pre-test, Common Formative Assessment, Test #1...
Call it what you want, it's basically the first test I give my students which sets the bar for them in the grade book. This semester, these tests have been administered solely through the ExamView Test Manager. Students access the tests through the EV Player and go to work. Once a student finishes the test, they get immediate feedback on each question. They know what they answered correctly and what they missed before they leave class. Skill lists are updated on the spot. Students have been taking screenshots of their feedback sheets and save them to their folder on the server. These screenshots double as proof of their completion of the assessment as well as a set of practice problems they can do as they prepare for re-assessment.





Re-assessment
I set up all of the tests so that students can access them only once. This prevents them from simply memorizing the answers from a test and then doing it again. That's why dynamic questions are a must. I have a set of post tests ready to go--it takes just a click of the button to calculate new values for the test. On most tests, I will make some of the questions short answer so students have to do some explaining. There is not an equation editor available for students while they take the test so I have to be careful which question types I use for free response.

In order for a student to take a re-assessment they have to do a couple of things.

• Demonstrate they recognize the mistakes they've made and show me they know how to fix them.
• Sign up. (h/t to Kate for the form idea)

I've tried to make all of my expectations as transparent as possible. There really are no surprises when it comes to test time. Here's the floor of what I expect you to know, now show me. It's been interesting talking to parents about this because they like the system but can't believe it's this simple.

Work in Progress
I just learned that I can also attach a link to a video or audio file in the test player. This will allow me to use these media as prompts for future test questions. I'm not exactly sure how I'll use it but I can see myself doing a screencast of myself doing a problem incorrectly and having students pick out the mistake. I can also see showing a clip of a projectile and asking students to find it's highest point.



My plan for next year is to develop a set of projects for students to do that incorporate a group of skills. Students will only be able to work on the project once they have demonstrated proficiency in that given skill set. My farming project may act as a true semester project this way. But instead of waiting until the end of the semester to give it, I will give it to them at the beginning of the year and say they have until the end of the semester to finish it.

Anyone up for developing some projects?

And Yet Another Reason

Many of my students have really had a tough time with solving equations with absolute value on both sides. If the test happens to be multiple choice, then they just work backwards by plugging the answer choices into the original equations. I found a way to combat that and still be able to administer the test via our network.

Short answers are allowed and the Test Player has a space for students to explain their process and submit a numeric answer. All I have to do is manually enter the number of points a student earned on each problem.




Once students have completed an exam, they receive a feedback sheet explaining what they missed and why. The rationale for each problem has been created for most of the problems in any test generator. However, since I've been creating many of the problems myself, I have to build the rationale into the problem using the algorithm definitions used in the problem itself.
So this:

Becomes this:

This becomes very convenient when it comes to online study guides as students and parents can go through the problems, see if they are correct and then, if a problem was missed, see why it was missed.

OK. I Really, Really Like It

Love may be too strong of a word. But now that the good folks in the IT department got me set up with ExamView player. Now I can administer tests via our local network. It's really a pretty simple process.

Publish existing test to LAN:

Decide who has access to the test:

Give it a name and password:

Scramble the questions. You can also set the algorithm values so each student actually gets a different test.

Decide if you want them to be able to check their answers as they go as well as the type of feedback they will receive once they have finished the test.

From there it is simply a matter of students going into a shared folder and opening up the ExamView player. They have to know where you have saved the test, but other than that, it's pretty smooth sailing.

Once students have finished the test, simply ask for the results and thar ya go!

So far, I am using only multiple choice tests. I have mixed feelings about this. However, now that I can write the questions myself and program the misconceptions into the distractors, I'm not mad at myself for doing it. I will start playing around with using numeric responses and see how it goes.

All in all, I really like the idea of being able to provide different versions of the same test depending on who is taking it and when. It also makes for a super easy re-assessment tool.

I Love Me Some ExamView

I spent the last two days on school business building a set of common formative assessments in ExamView that are aligned to my department's skills list for our algebra and pre-algebra classes. Many of the questions are dynamic which means that for any given question type, multiple versions of the question can be created by the click of a button. As I was looking through the question banks, I realized that there were some skills that didn't have questions that fit what we will be trying to assess. Solution? Build it yourself.

The process is a bit tedious at first, but I was able to use previously made questions to figure out how to build a simple question regarding slope.

Step 1: Define your algorithms.

Step 2 : Create a graph using pre-defined variables.

Step 3: Define the distractors.

Yeah, gotta say I love this feature. Finding questions with good distractors is tough at best. But if you decide on an algorithm based on common misconceptions, you're good to go. In this problem, I decided the common misconceptions for students calculating slope based on a graph were:

• Using Run/Rise instead of Rise/Run
• Confusing negative with positive slope
• Confusing the y-intercept with the slope

Of course, there may be some discussion on what the best misconceptions would be, but for the sake of practicing, those are what I went with.

Step 4: Decide how many of these type of question you want in your assessment.

I'm glad that I don't have to build all of these from scratch, but I like the fact that filling in the holes isn't too tough.