Adding Inline Assessments
- Ruth Riddle (Unlicensed)
Thinkscape has five different inline assessment options: long-answer questions, short-answer questions, multiple choice questions, table-type questions, and sketching questions.
To add an inline assessment question to a step, first you need to click the Add Item button at the bottom of the step you want to add the question to. This creates a new item in the lab step. For the item type, select Inline Assessment from the dropdown menu. Next, select the desired question type from the Question Type dropdown menu. Type the question into the text window provided. The Question Weight determines how many marks the question is worth. You also have the option to show the students if their answer was correct after it’s been submitted. Another option is to set how many times a student can submit their answer. This can range between one submission and unlimited submission.
For multiple choice and short-answer questions, you also have to enter a correct answer to the question. Because the correct answer is entered, these questions can be graded automatically by Thinkscape. In short-answer questions, the correct answer is entered in the Answer window. For multiple choice questions, one or more correct answers can be selected by checking the box in the Correct Option column next to the answer in the Options column. For multiple choice questions you can set up to 10 answer choices.
For table-type questions, you first need to select the number of columns and rows you want in the table. To add rows and columns, select a cell from the table with a white background and click +Column Before or After Selected, or +Row Before or After Selected. To remove a row or column, select the desired row or column and click the Delete Selected Row/Column button. Content can by typed directly into any of the cells in the table. Keep in mind that if you’ve added content into a cell, the students will not be able to type anything into that cell. Tables also have the ability to produce a corresponding graph as the students enter data. The graphing tool treats the far left column as the horizontal axis values and the other columns as the corresponding vertical axis values with their own line colours.
Sketching questions allow students to create drawings in response to questions, which will be included in their reports. If you wish, you can add a background image to their sketching workspace. To add an image, click Choose under Image. Browse your folders for the image file you want to add. Once it’s been selected, click Open. The image you’ve selected will now appear as the background of the sketch.
When you’re done creating the inline assessment, click Done.