Formative assessment for previously learned knowledge.

Well the first week back to school has been a busy one. Course  shells inside to D2L to set up, registrations to double check and the list goes on. But the last couple of days was the beginning of using online quizzes and ExamView questions to conduct formative assessment.

Since students are starting a new math   course, I thought that using some formative assessment would be a good place to assess previously learned knowledge. So this is what I did:

To begin I created a small multiple choice quiz (5-10 questions) in ExamView and used the dynamic capabilities to duplicate those questions to create question sets. After exporting the questions as a Blackboard quiz in zipped file format, I uploaded the file as a question bank and created my quiz with question sets inside D2L. 

With the quiz created I set the quiz to be timed with auto submit and with two attempts. I then set the quiz in a way that students could only see the questions that were incorrect after completing their attempt. Now I was ready for class.

Students were then logged into our synchronous tool, Blackboard Collaborate, during our assigned class time together. I then instructed students to start the quiz. Some students went ahead, completed the quiz with a 100%. For those that did I encouraged them to do it again for extra practice. For those that scored high, I encouraged them to look at which questions they got wrong and gave them hints needed to get the correct answer. For those that were struggling I had those students use the screen capture tool within our classroom and paste the questions they were struggling with on the whiteboard for more intensive and direct instruction. They can do their second attempt later after having more time to review. 

The class went quite fast and I now have a good idea of what I do and do not need to review. I also now know who may need my help a bit further and with some individual instruction. With theExamView  publisher banks in combination with what I have found and created, I can use formative assessment in my courses as much or little as I choose. And I can respond to individual student needs... and it's only been the first week of school. It should be a good year.