Formative tests are a great tool to generate feedback and insights:
For your students it provides a chance to practice subjects that are mixed. You know as well as I do, that this is always more difficult than answering questions where you already know which subject it concerns.
For you as a teacher it provides an additional channel of insights into the current skills of your students. A snapshot of what they currently master and don't master yet.
Type of formative assessments
Automatic Formative Test (Self Test): covers subjects in one module
Manual Formative Test: contains exercises you select yourself
Automatic formative test covering multiple modules / subjects
How do you create these formative tests? That's easy.
Make sure you are on your course map and you are in edit mode.
Go to the module where you want to insert the formative test.
At the bottom of the module, click 'Add Test'.
You will now see a modal with two options: automatic and manual.
1. Automatic Formative Test
Just click it and you're done!
Behind the scenes, our selection engine will 'randomly' select 10 exercises from the subjects in that module.
For the interested statistician: the selection is not random, it is stratified sampling over the available subjects. The logic is as follows:
We pick a random exercise out of the "uncompleted" subjects as long as there are "uncompleted" subjects
A subject is regarded as "completed" when one of the following conditions apply:
all exercises have been asked
student answered 2 correct or 2 incorrect (skip is seen as incorrect). Example: student has answered 'correct', 'incorrect', 'correct' => subject is completed
If all subjects are completed we will randomly pick new exercises from the least asked subjects if there are any exercises left
If all exercises have been picked the test is finished, also if the # max questions is higher than the # questions asked
You can change the settings of an automative formative test, such as the number of attempts, between which dates it is open, etc. Read more about changing those settings here.
2. Manual Formative Test
In this Manual mode you can select you own exercises.
You can start by creating an empty test in the designated repository. Give it a relevant name. In the example above, an existing test is edited.
You can change the settings of a manual test, such as the number of attempts, between which dates it is open, etc. Read more about changing those settings here.
You will then need a set of exercises. If you have not created exercises for the test yet, you can create these in your 'repository'.
In the test, the order is set to random by default. Change this if you want and reorder the questions if necessary.
Once you have the exercises, you can add these exercises to your test. Go to your repository, select your exercises and click "link to test" in the top right corner.
Once you have added the exercises, go back to your course and add the manual test in edit mode. Select the repository where you just created the test and add it to your course.
Click save and you're done!
3. Automatic formative test covering multiple modules (or subjects)
In addition to the options above, we can also help you create an automatic formative test covering multiple modules (or subjects). In that case, you will specify what modules you would like your test to cover. Based on that input, we generate an automatic test that randomly selects exercises from these modules.
Note: you do not create this test yourself in your repositories.
You might use this diagnostic test:
At the beginning of your course, to diagnose the level of your class
For students, their results will be translated into colour codes for all the subjects covered in the test, giving an indication of their mastery of the different subjects.
As a recap at the end of your course, so your students can check whether they've mastered all subjects.
To request a multi-module automatic test, please fill in this form at least 3 business days in advance.
If you have any questions, reach out to us through the chat or support@grasple.com!
Notes and tips
Note: once you have added the test to your course map, it will be immediately visible to your students. Want to first create the test and then later add it to your course map? Then create the test from your repository.
Final tip: if you want to give each student a different test, set a limit to the number of questions and add at least twice the number of questions to the test. The test will sample randomly from that set of exercises.
Any questions? Just click the icon on the bottom right to chat with us.