Evaluations Welcome to Evaluations. I’m going to walk you through how to grade and manage the various types of evaluations included in PMI’s online courses.

Introduction Quizzes Assignments Discussions Pima Medical Institute’s online classes include three types of evaluations: quizzes, discussions, and assignments. These will already be within your course, so you don’t need to worry about creating them. An important part of your role as an instructor is to provide constructive feedback for students on their work to help them improve. Each type of evaluation is graded a bit differently, but you are able to provide comments, no matter what the type of evaluation. This video will show you how to grade evaluations and offer tips on managing them effectively. Quizzes Assignments Discussions

Menu Quizzes Assignments Discussions Click on a type of evaluation to learn more about it. Quizzes Assignments Discussions

Grading Quizzes Quizzes Quizzes within the online courses are generally auto-graded, meaning once a student takes a quiz, his or her score will automatically appear in the grade book. If a quiz includes short answer or essay questions, you will need to view the student’s answers and manually enter a grade. You may also at times need to manually change a grade. To do either, go to the grade book and: Find the cell that contains the score for that item. Click the chevron on the right side of the cell and click on the Attempt (date) You will see the questions and student’s responses on the next page. Enter point values in the boxes on the right. Scroll down and click Submit. The total score will now be visible on the grade book. Quizzes

Quiz Management Quizzes The day before you make a quiz available, send a short email reminding students that: a quiz is coming up, when the quiz must be completed, how many points it’s worth.   You could also use this opportunity to point out some areas that they might want to give extra attention. Make quizzes available for only 48 hours—one weekend day plus one week day. If they have access to it sooner, they may be tempted to take the quiz without completing the readings, assignments, or discussions. The day a quiz opens, post an announcement reminder containing a link to the quiz. Quizzes

Quiz Feedback The default setting for quizzes is to show students only their score. AFTER everyone has completed the quiz, you can make the results available so that students can review what they missed. This minimizes the opportunities for cheating. To make results available, go to the lesson that contains the quiz. Click the chevron beside the quiz title and select Edit test options. Scroll to Show test results and feedback to students and check the following: After Submission Score - this is the default After attempts are graded OR select a date option from the drop-down menu Score Submitted answers – they can see their answers Correct Answers –  self-explanatory, right? Feedback – if any feedback was available for the quiz responses, they’ll see this too. Click submit   Making quiz feedback available can be part of your end of lesson housekeeping. When you send a lesson wrap-up, remind them that they can now see the results of their quiz. Quizzes

Click most recent attempt Grading Assignments Enter score here Click to download Chevron Assignments in PMI online courses are evaluations where students must write their answers (generally on a provided file) and upload the file to Blackboard. These may be documents, presentations, or spreadsheets. To grade an assignment, you must generally download the file, enter a score, and provide feedback.   To download a file, go to the grade book and: Find the cell that contains the score for that item. Click the chevron on the right side of the cell and click on the Attempt (date) On the next page, you’ll see a link on the right side for the student’s file. Click the arrow to the right of the filename to download. You can open the file, review it, and put comments directly on it. If you do this, save the file to your computer or flash drive, and then reupload it to the course. In the feedback, tell the student to download the file to view comments. Enter a score beside Attempt and comments in the Grader Feedback box. Click the Submit button. Click most recent attempt Enter comments here Assignments

Previews A preview is generally available for the more difficult or multi-part assignments that students sometimes stumble over. The purpose of a preview is for the student to receive general feedback; something along the lines of, “You’re on the right track with this assignment, and I think you could improve it by checking your spelling,”  or, “Great work so far. It looks like you missed question two, though.” A preview is not intended for the instructor to correct the assignment, then invite a resubmission by the student for a perfect score. You need to make sure that the student is still doing the work to earn the grade.   A numerical grade needs to be entered into Blackboard for a student to see your feedback. Most instructors enter a 1 as a “placeholder” grade to distinguish preview feedback from a final grade. It’s a good idea to inform your students of this approach ahead of time; otherwise they might panic and assume they actually only scored one point. Assignments with previews must be set up to allow additional attempts. It’s easiest to do this when you are writing in your due dates. Click the chevron beside the assignment name and click Edit. Scroll down and under Availability, click the radio button beside Number of Attempts. Enter 2 in the box. Click Submit. Assignments

Assignment Feedback Assignments Ever wonder if students are actually reading the feedback you provide when you’re grading assignments, especially when it comes to preview grades?  It’s never a bad idea to remind students to look for your grading comments. After all, your comments are constructive and invite additional learning opportunities, right?   Here’s the step-by-step breakdown for students on how to review your feedback: 1.       Click Course Tools in the left navigation menu 2.       Click My Grades 3.       Scroll down to the assignment grade you’re looking for and click the Comments link 4.       A pop-up box opens with the instructor’s feedback. Easy, huh?  Here’s to the avid reading of awesome feedback! Assignments

Grading Discussions Discussions To put all discussion posts on one screen: Access the discussion you want to read. Click on a thread. Either select the check boxes next to the posts you want to read OR “Select all” > Go. You’ll find the “Select all” option on the LEFT side of your screen in the grey bar just above window that displays the post. Click the “collect” box in your tool bar at the top LEFT of your screen. Grading discussions is similar to grading assignments. You access the student’s submission via the grade book and give a grade and feedback. Before doing that, however, it’s best to go to the discussion board (preferably at regular intervals throughout the time it’s open) and read the posts in sequence. To post grades for discussions, go to the grade book and click the chevron to the right of the cell for that item. Click Grade User Activity. On the next page, you’ll see the student’s posts and statistics regarding participation. To enter a grade, click the Edit Grade button in the Forum Grade box. Type in a score and feedback and click Submit.  Discussions

Discussion Rubrics Discussions Grading discussions is a bit subjective because although there is grading criteria, it still requires you to make a judgment about the quality of the posts. You want to set a high standard and actually make the discussion meaningful and insightful. Students are graded on quantity AND quality. In order to even approach a “C” level, they have to post the minimum. To get full credit, students must be mindful of spelling and grammar, post insightful comments, and often do additional research to expand the dialogue. They will link current knowledge with prior learning. This is pretty much outlined in the rubric.   Even though the rubric is available in each discussion board area, you may want to email it to your students along with general discussion hints and tips before their first real discussion board assignment. You can also provide an example of what a substantive post looks like to set the expectation. Online instructors can lead by example and engage students with regular posts, encourage them via questions, and add their own professional or personal experiences to make the content relevant. This is one way that we can demonstrate to our accrediting body (ABHES) that we are regularly interacting with our students, so it’s an important piece of what we do. Discussions

Discussion Participation Discussion boards – don’t you just love ‘em? You either get the student who goes on and on for no reason, or the student who provides a minimal answer and replies with the famous one-liner, “I agree!”  How do you get students to engage with the topic and deepen their understanding, to relate ideas to their real life, to consider alternative perspectives, and utilize effective problem-solving skills? How do you do all of that without giving away the answers, or adding to the plentiful one-liners with, “Great job, well done!”   The short answer is, ask questions and model the way. If you actively engage your students with substantive posts based on your opinions and professional experience, and you post multiple times to multiple people on multiple days, the students will generally follow suit. If your posts are minimal—or worse, non-existent—you can expect similar in return. Try asking open-ended questions that encourage self-reflection and analysis of the course content. Remain neutral and ask students to consider the topic from an alternative point of view, or ask them to respond to a supposition posed by a classmate. One question that almost always works is, “What aspect of this assignment was the most rewarding/challenging for you, and why?” One last piece of advice – if you pose a question to a student, go back into the discussion and acknowledge their response. There’s nothing worse than a student working hard on a thought-provoking response, and it going unread and unanswered. Discussions

Summary Grading evaluations may seem a bit complicated. It definitely gets easier the more you do it, and you’ll have plenty of opportunities to practice all the techniques presented in this video. Remember that you can return to it if you need to look anything up. The most important thing, as always, is student success. As a PMI Online instructor, your goal is to provide constructive feedback and assistance to help students succeed. Keep that in mind, and managing evaluations should be easy.