Making Digital Pre-assessments.

 

Last time, we looked at why one should integrate some sort of pre-assessment regularly in class. Today, we'll explore the different types of assessment tests available and ways to administer them digitally.  

One of the most obvious types of pre-assessment is the pretest at the beginning with a post test at the end of the section to monitor growth. It is possible to become overwhelmed by the amount of information obtained from the pretest and due to Covid interrupting instruction over the past two years, students may have huge gaps in their fundamental knowledge.

Now there are a couple of ways to handle this.  One way is to create the pretest and post test so they have the exact same questions. One major disadvantage to this method is that students will have seen the questions before because you are writing only one test. This does mean both the pretest and post test have exactly the same number of questions and both will take up a large chunk of time in class.  

Another choice is to create a pretest that has similar questions to the post test.  In this variation, one must make two different tests but there is no chance that students will have been exposed to the questions before and it does require students to show they understand the concept or topic.  Again, both tests might end up the same length and take time from class.

Now, a slightly better choice might be targeted mini quizzes that are focused on specific skills or concepts.  These are shorter and provide less data so you are not as overwhelmed. It also provides students with a better chance to show what they really know.  With mini quizzes, you end up administering pre-assessments more often so it is important to think in terms of chunking the material so it all relates. The shorter quizzes give a better feel for who understands and who doesn't understand the material. 

Then there is the tiered pre-assessment that contains questions containing questions for below level, on level, and above level students. This is more of a differentiated assessment and it allows you to test for a range of skills so you know if they've mastered the pre-requisite skills so they are ready to attack the new concepts.  One can look at the standards and skills that are considered the most important.

Now for the types of questions, one can use multiple choice, short answers, or true or false to get different types of information.  One of the best apps to use is Google Forms because it allows you to set the questions up so the program can self grade. No matter which type of test you use, there should be no more than 15 questions to be done.  If you use the mini quiz version of pre-assessments, you can do them a bit more often and with fewer questions so you need no more than 10 questions to provide the information you need.

If you don't like google forms, you can use quizzes or other program. Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.