New Assessments Coming to Schoology

Schoology recently announced another major improvement coming this fall 2017.  What is currently called "Test/Quizzes" will now become "Assessments" (which better aligns with the way the tool can be fully used, in my opinion).  Yesterday, I watched a webinar on the new assessment tool.   While the existing question types will get improved for all users, only Enterprise users will have free access to the new "enhanced question" types, such as highlight hotspot, math short answer, number line, and "fill in the blank" (FITB) options.

The student will have more accessibility options, such as choosing a Spanish keyboard and changing the font size.

Other improvements include:

• The student will see the elapsed time as they take the assessment. The total time will be part of the data a teacher will see once submitted.
• You can now tie a specific rubric to a specific short answer question, and use it to grade and give feedback.  (Different questions can have different rubrics!)
• For some questions, you can build in a partial credit option when automatically grading.
• A survey can be created for the end of the assessment -- a great reflection tool for the student and a way the teacher can get direct feedback.
• An improved user interface for both a teacher making the assessment and the student taking it.

The new teacher interface when adding and editing questions.

I should add that older Test/Quizzes and question banks will still work in Schoology with the updated assessment tool.

I highly recommend watching their archived webinar (39:06), especially to see the new enhanced questions in action!

Note: the images above are all captured from the webinar.