While there is an ample number of tools and software available for educators, there are some standout options for those looking to create, grade, and hand out assessments online. We’ve tried and tested some of the most popular and compiled our favorites in this list.
Pen and paper assignments completed in exam halls may still have a place in modern education, but there is a wave of online tools and assessment software that challenges this traditional way of doing things. So let’s have a look and see what SaaS tools and online services you can use for your next assignment.
- Mentimeter
- Socrative
- ASSISTments
- Moodle
- Flip
- Edutastic
- Formative
- Quizlet
Mentimeter - For fun quizzes and formative assessments
Quizzes
Mentimeter aims to make every type of educational quiz a more engaging and enjoyable experience - no more expressions of dread from students when you mention the word quiz. To do so we have designed and tailored the quiz experience to make classes and lectures a more enjoyable and less stressful experience. The goal is to make students want to take part and show off what they have learned.
Educators can create a quiz made up of multiple choice and type-the-answer questions and add leaderboards that allow students of any age to compete against one another in a friendly competition. Likewise, it’s possible to award additional points for the fastest answer or, if you want students to focus on answering correctly, offer the same amount of points for all correct responses. Our leaderboards are fully animated and designed to build some suspense before the winner is announced.
Formative Assessment
Not only can you create quizzes, but you can also use Mentimeter as a formative assessment tool. FA helps to improve student understanding and quickly aids teachers in identifying and clearing up misconceptions, misunderstandings, and confusion.
Finding tools to run formative assessments is not the most straightforward task on a teacher's to-do list. Mentimeter has been designed with this particular teaching method in mind, however. We have some ideas and examples for those interested in how exactly you can use Mentimeter as a formative assessment tool.
Socrative - For detailed reports and insights
Socrative is a great way to build a comprehensive assessment full of multiple choice, true or false, or short answer questions. There are a variety of settings that let educators change how exactly students will interact with the questions; students can receive instant feedback as they go through the exam or freely navigate through questions at their own pace.
A significant benefit of Socrative is the educator or teacher dashboard. As students progress from question to question, teachers receive instant feedback on their answers and can monitor each student’s grades and the overall grade of the class. Thanks to Socrative, there is no need to waste time grading papers and writing individual feedback - it’s all taken care of.
ASSISTments - For math assessments
Math is a tricky subject and asking for help or admitting you don’t understand something can be difficult and even demoralizing for many students. ASSISTments help both teachers and students improve the assignment process with the help of instant feedback. This free service lets educators set assignments online for students who will receive feedback once completed. Teachers can then study these assignments to pinpoint which students are struggling and what elements they find difficult.
A key feature for our US audience is that ASSISTments has a variety of math curricula from numerous states with a complete set of assignments. Of course, teachers can create their accounts and design bespoke assessments for their students.
Moodle - For complex assignments and assessments
Moodle is a giant in the Learning Platform space and a service that is highly rated by users around the world. Many of the other tools mentioned here have built-in assessment builders. Moodle acts more like a portal for traditional assignments that you would give out in a semester - essays, video presentations, etc.
Students can upload written work directly to Moodle or as files and documents. Educators can download all these submissions simultaneously, including comments and feedback, then reupload the marked assignments for each student to re-download. No handing up papers, no correcting pages and pages of work, and no scrolling through a bulletin board of grades. Moodle is sure to save everyone a vast amount of time and effort.
Flip - For video assessments
Flip is an interesting tool that offers a unique and modern approach to assessments. Often when we think of exams and assessments our minds go to written work that needs to be either handwritten or typed up on a computer. Creating a group and adding students is a quick and easy process. From there, teachers can create topics on any given subject on which students record their responses for submission.
Students can concurrently work on their presentation skills and show off their knowledge on a given topic. Presenting is a skill many of us are required to use and improve in our working lives and asking students to develop this set of skills early on is a great way to set them up for success. Flip is, therefore, a great way to test students' knowledge levels and professional skills for the future, hopefully developing their confidence in the process.
Edulastic - For fans of data
Edulastic says that the data you can gather from its platform is nothing short of transformative and it’s hard to disagree with them on that point. The main benefit of Edulastic is how educators can leverage the data gathered from the assessments they set and plan lesson plans accordingly. Edulastic provides educators a more
Edulastic also boasts over 3,000 assessments as part of its catalog and over 30 different question types to choose from when creating bespoke assessments. This in turn will help educators everywhere draw inspiration from other teachers and draw up more comprehensive lesson plans in record time.
Formative - For a comprehensive teaching tool
Formative has all the bells and whistles that a modern teacher could need. Formative has developed an array of features that allow educators to run a fully collaborative class on a digital whiteboard or create instructional videos that can be used as a study tool. In addition, Formative likewise boasts a series of unique tools that simplifies the processes of grading and assigning work.
Their audio and visual assessment features offer a new way to test students in language classes, presentation skills, and more. Educators may also leave comments on work just as they would on written papers so they can instruct and guide students as needed. Another useful feature is the copy and paste identifier. This tool alerts teachers if sections of a student’s answer have been directly copied and pasted from another source. In the age of Wikipedia and other online encyclopedias, plagiarism is common, but thanks Formative educators can discourage students from taking the easy route.
Quizlet - For assessment prep
Ok, we are getting a little loose with our definition of what is and what isn’t an assessment tool here but we like Quizlet so it stays. Quizlet is an incredibly popular and diverse tool that lets educators test their students in a variety of different ways. While their flashcards may be the most popular feature in their arsenal, Quizlet offers far more study tools that are sure to keep students engaged and help them get better results.
Teachers can create their series of study materials or use one of the endless number of premade user-generated study sets. Likewise, Quizlet’s Solutions section features detailed solutions from popular textbooks written by their team of experts. This can offer further help to students outside of the classroom so they can arrive at their exam fully prepared and ready to succeed.
New ways to test students
As we have seen, each of these tools can greatly benefit educators of all levels from grade school to university. As more classes and lectures migrate online and the experience becomes even more seamless, we can expect these assessment tools to become all the more popular. Thankfully the world of EdTech is adapting quickly and these tools are sure to get better and better also.
