Teachers can create individualized assessments to support a modified curriculum, IEP’s, or to provide students with a choice of assessments. In the assessment form, the Assign To field enables teachers to choose between assigning all students or a subset of students. By default, assignments are assigned to all students.
To assign a subset of students, click Change. The student list appears, and the teacher chooses which students to include in the assignment. Teachers can clear the list by clicking clear, or select all students by clicking Select All.
The Assign To field lists the students who have been assigned the assessment. If the assessment is for all students, the form displays the text “All Students”.
Individual assessments are not posted to the Class conversation and activity feed, but they do appear in the Gradebook, Content panel, Planner, and Perspective.
The Gradebook disables the cells for students who are not included in the assessment.
The list of students can be changed by editing the assessment form. If a student has a grade and is subsequently unassigned, the grade will be dropped from all average calculations. The grade, comment, submissions, and discussions are retained and are formatted to indicate the student is no longer included. Student averages of those who are not included in an individualized assessment are not affected.
For the teacher, the Content panel and Planner add an Individualized label to any individualized assessment. Each student’s Perspective includes only the assignments that apply to the student. The Individualized label is added to individualized assessment.
Students only see their assignments in the Content panel, My Work, Planner, Recent Activity and Calendar. Students are only notified about their own assessments. The Individualized label is not visible to students or parents. If the student has not been assigned the assessment, it is not visible to the student.
Cross posting and Individualized Assessments
Individualized Assessments can be cross posted. The assessments are cross posted without any assigned students. The cross posted assessment is added to the other classes without making the students aware of an assessment they may not be responsible for. For students, no notifications are sent, nor are any updates made to the Content panel, My Work, Planner, or calendars until the teacher assigns students to the cross posted individualized assessment.
The Gradebook includes a Set Students label, and the Content panel and the Planner include an Unassigned label.
Once students are assigned to the assessment, the student will see the assessment in the Content panel, Recent Activity, My Work, Planner, and calendars.
Weighting and Individualized Assessments
The introduction of individualized assessment doesn’t change anything about how averages are calculated. Any summative assessment with a grade is used in the calculation of the average. If an assessment does not have a grade then it is not used in the calculation.
The Perspective lists the assessments assigned to the student and displays the weight the assessment is contributing to the average. Analyze – count will show how many assessments each student has been assigned. Teachers can also set up a summary column in the gradebook.
If we look at Vita’s Perspective, we can see that 100% of her grade is coming from assessment 1.
For Mason, we can see 100% of his grade is coming from assessment 2. If we look at a third student we can see that they have no calculated average at all.
Now let’s fill in the grades for all 4 assessments. The Perspective now indicates that each assessment is weighted at 25%. The overall average is calculated based on the grades entered for each student.
Teachers could create an assessment that is hidden from students and then tell just Vita to do the assessment. But they could never share the grade because all students would then see the assessment name and it would appear on every student’s Perspective. Individualized assessment is about accurately reflecting the intentions of the teacher and ensuring each student understands what is expected of them.
Let’s see this in action. Let’s add an individualized assessment for only Vita.
Here’s how the weighting form looks now. There are five assessments each worth 20%. When Vita has grades for all 5 assessments, they will each contribute 20% to her calculated average.
Vita is the only student who can be graded on all 5 assessments. Let’s fill in her grades.
(enter 10, 10, 5, 5, 10)
Let’s also fill in the same grades for Mason.
In Vita’s perspective, each assessment is weighted at 20%. For Mason, the 4 graded assessments are weighted at 25%
