Using AssessPrep for Online Learning and Remote Assessments

Written by AssessPrep COVID-19 has led to unprecedented challenges for schools all over the world. As per UNESCO, close to 1.5 billion students are out of school due to the coronavirus, which is 9 out of 10 students in the world. This is a very challenging time for all school leaders, educators, parents and staff who enable learning for students on a daily basis.  Educators across the world are innovating and adapting so that they can continue to provide meaningful learning experiences and communicate effectively with their students. Students are being asked to learn in an environment that is very new and need all the support they can get. With the global shift towards online learning over the last 2 months, our team at AssessPrep has been working hard to ship the tools that enable schools and the teaching community to maintain continuity learning and assessment remotely. We want to let you know that our team is prepared to support you.  In our continued effort to support our school community during this difficult time, our customer success teams have been reaching out to schools to provide recommended practices and we recently hosted a webinar on managing remote assessments. We invited educators and administrators to showcase how AssessPrep can be used to create and deliver meaningful assessments remotely. Mr. Jitendra Pandey, MYP Coordinator, Stonehill International School, also joined us and shared best practices with respect to online assessments at their school. You can watch it again here: [embed]https://youtu.be/BuCeHPJSReE[/embed]

What is AssessPrep and how can I use it in my school for online learning?

AssessPrep is an advanced platform designed for schools to transition from paper and pencil to next generation digital assessments. Since 2016, Assessprep has delivered both formative and summative assessment tools to IB teachers around the world. Now, we cater to all schools. AssessPrep supports low-stakes online assessments as well as high-stakes, secure offline assessments. AssessPrep’s mission has always been to make assessments efficient and improve learning outcomes. Even before the current crisis, 100+ schools had begun this transition and now it has become more relevant than ever. Our educator community is growing fast and created record resources and assessments to make full use of AssessPrep and gather half a million responses from students in the last 2 months. AssessPrep has five main components:

1. Setup
2. Test Creation
3. Test Delivery
4. Test Monitoring and Invigilation 
5. Grading and Analytics  

Here’s a quick 4-minute demo. Setup Schools that use ManageBac can benefit from our Assessprep integration and use our one-click setup that syncs all user accounts, subjects, terms, years and classes over to AssessPrep. No extra setup is required and teachers can begin creating tests on the same day. Such schools can also use the Login with ManageBac button to log in to AssessPrep and don’t have to remember extra login credentials. Here’s a guide for this process. All other schools can reach out to us and we will have you up and running within 24 hours. We will assist you in adding your users, enabling subjects, creating classes and starting with test creation. The AssessPrep setup process is intuitive and quick. Test Creation Once setup is done, you can create rich, interactive assessments with an option to collaborate with other teachers of the same subject. To start quickly, use the online assessment mode so that students can take the test using any browser. You can create 15+ question types like- Multiple Choice Questions, Long Answers, Label, Hotspot, Classify, Graphing, and more.  Here’s a detailed guide on how to create tests. Test Delivery Once you’re done adding content and questions to your assessment, you can publish it so that students can take the assessment. Depending on the nature of the assessment - high stakes or low stakes, the teacher can deliver assessment in offline or online mode. So if you’re looking to do a mid-term or end-term, you could use the offline delivery mode. If you’re just assigning a homework assignment or an open book test, use the online mode. Also, since AssessPrep supports multiple language input, you can create and deliver assessments in any language you want.

1. Offline assessments are delivered via the AssessPrep desktop application for Mac and Windows. Students have to download this app and install it. Once you publish the test, send the Test ID and the Student Codes to the students so that they can download the test a day in advance and be ready for test day. The students cannot start the test until you share the Access Code with them. The student app opens in lockdown mode, which means that access to all other applications and files on their computer, is blocked. You can have a browser-based Zoom/Meet video call running with your students in the background if you wish.
2. Online assessments can be taken by the students through any web browser (Google Chrome is recommended). There is no security in this mode and students can access the web and other applications and files on their computer. This mode is great for homework assignments or quizzes and very easy and quick to start with.

Here is a detailed guide on how to deliver assessments on AssessPrep. Test Monitoring and Live Invigilation A real-time monitoring tool is essential for making remote assessments work like a breeze. You can use the Live Invigilation dashboard on AssessPrep to view real-time progress of all students and perform certain actions like adding extra time, enabling the calculator, pause, etc. remotely. This dashboard makes AssessPrep ideal for remote assessments.  Here’s a detailed guide on how to use the Live Invigilation dashboard. Grading and Analytics Grading on AssessPrep is fast and easy. Many of the questions can be auto-corrected, dramatically reducing workload. You can annotate student answers with your comments and give overall feedback. In the case of the IB MYP, you can also grade criteria-wise. Once graded, you can ‘Mark as check’ and send the responses back to the students. You get actionable analytics that give you insights into knowledge gaps and common misconceptions. Here’s a detailed guide on how to grade on AssessPrep.

Additional Guides

All our help guides are available here along with FAQs here.

Getting Started

To get started with a free 30-day trial, email sales@managebac.com to get started. We also offer free training for teachers.

Share how you are supporting students and parents!

We want to hear from you on what you are doing during the COVID-19 epidemic to keep student learning on track and to support parents during this shift to online learning. Email us with your tips, ideas and stories at info@assessprep.com.