Providing online assessment practice opportunities

Important: This article is currently under review to align with the December 2023 Moodle upgrade. For further support, contact ltc-central@uow.edu.au.

With the increasing number of formal assessment tasks being held in online learning environments, there is a focus on how to best support students in engaging with these tasks, particularly when the assessment tasks may utilise unfamiliar software or tools.

This article focuses on two tools available in the UOW online learning environment that have been used to implement assessment tasks:

• Turnitin, commonly used for extended response assessment tasks (such as reports and essays)
• Moodle Quiz, commonly used for timed assessment tasks where a range of different question types can be utilised (such as multiple choice, true/false, short and long answer).

Why?

Including practice opportunities for online assessment tasks:

• provides an opportunity to build student academic and digital literacy
• helps students become familiar with assessment task types and tools within the online learning environment
• promotes self-regulation in students’ learning
• reduces the overall cognitive burden (i.e. stress) for students when they undertake the actual formal assessment task.

Providing practice assessment opportunities is particularly important for students in their first year of study, as they may not have experienced the different assessment task types and tools they will encounter in a higher education setting and need to become familiar with them before being expected to complete them. However all students benefit from support as they progress through their studies and encounter new assessment task types and tools.

How?

An important consideration when setting up online assessment practice opportunities is clear communication to students about:

• why you are providing a practice task; and
• what the expectations and instructions are for engaging with the practice task.

Communicating this information to students will help maximise the benefit from the practice task.

Creating a practice Turnitin activity

The Turnitin functionality can be daunting for some students; in particular the production of the similarity report is often associated with assumptions that it is only used to “catch cheaters”.

However, giving students the opportunity to receive and interpret a similarity report and then make adjustments and changes to their submission based on the report is a useful way of:

• instilling confidence in students,
• allowing them to become familiar with the process, and
• promotes academic integrity in a positive manner.

It provides a way to integrate digital literacies in your subject, and additionally the integration of academic literacies through helping students to correctly interpret a similarity report.

Part 1: Create a label with informative text

When you set up a practice Turnitin activity, it is important to include information about the purpose of the activity and how students should engage with it. One way to do this is by creating a label that is located adjacent to the Turnitin activity in your site.

To create the label:

1. Click the Turn Edit On button.
   
2. Click the Add an activity or resource link.
3. In the Add an activity or resource chooser, search for or select the Label resource.
   
4. Enter your explanation and instructional text into the Label text text box.
   

The following example text comes from a subject in the Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities:

Part 2: Create a practice Turnitin activity

1. Click the Turn Edit On button.
   
2. Click the Add an activity or resource link.
3. In the Add an activity or resource chooser, search for or select the Assignment - Turnitin resource.
   
4. Enter the practice task name in the Turnitin Assignment Name text box.
5. [Optional] add the same explanation and instructional text you put in the label to the Summary text box.
6. Expand the Similarity Report Options section, then adjust the following settings to give students multiple opportunities to submit, but not have their practice submissions added to the Turnitin repository:
   1. From the Allow Submissions after the Due Date dropdown menu, select Yes
   2. From the Report Generation Speed dropdown menu, select Generate reports immediately (students can resubmit until due date): After 3 resubmissions reports generate after 24 hours
   3. From the Store Student Papers dropdown menu, select No Repository
      
      Note: Having this set to any other option will pollute the actual assessment task by throwing up similarites to practice submissions.
   4. From the Check against stored student papers dropdown menu, select Yes
   5. From the Check against internet dropdown menu, select Yes
   6. From the Check against journals, periodicals and publications dropdown menu, select Yes
   7. From the Exclude Bibliography dropdown menu, select Yes
   8. From the Exclude Quoted Material dropdown menu, select No
7. Click the Save and return to site or Save and display button.

Once set up, encourage your students to use the practice Turnitin activity to generate a similarity report that them can use to examine their writing. Resources to assist you with supporting your students in interpreting the similarity report are located in the Related information section at the end of this article.

Creating a practice Quiz activity

The Moodle Quiz activity can be used to implement timed online exam-style assessment tasks; this includes quiz tasks with a range of different question types, and tasks where students are required to download an ‘exam paper’, complete it, and then re-upload their answers into the quiz activity.

Students may be unfamiliar with undertaking a timed quiz activity, so a practice opportunity is a useful tool to reduce student anxiety. A practice opportunity prior to the formal assessment task can additionally be used as an opportunity to promote academic integrity through the implementation of an academic integrity statement.

To set up a practice quiz activity:

Part 1: Create a label with informative text

When you set up a practice Turnitin activity, it is important to include information about the purpose of the activity and how students should engage with it. One way to do this is by creating a label that is located adjacent to the Turnitin activity in your site.

1. Click the Turn Edit On button.
   
2. Click the Add an activity or resource link.
3. In the Add an activity or resource chooser, search for or select the Label resource.
   
4. Enter your explanation and instructional text into the Label text text box. Provide students with information on the practice exam appropriate to your needs. It is useful to explain that the task is in preparation for the formal timed assessment that will occur at x time on x date, and that it includes an academic integrity statement.
   

1. Click the Turn Edit On button.
   
2. Click the Add an activity or resource link.
3. In the Add an activity or resource chooser, search for or select the Quiz resource.
   

4. [Optional] Add the same explanation and instructional text you put in the label to the Description text box.
5. While you are editing the Description text box, also add the academic integrity statement that students will complete as part of the practice assessment task to familiarise them with the use of it. Further information is available in the Academic integrity statements for online assessment tasks article.
6. For the remainder of the quiz settings:
   1. If you would like students to practice the quiz with the timed functionality, specific guidance is provided in the Timed online assessments using the Moodle Quiz article;
   2. Otherwise general information on quiz settings can be found in the Moodle Quiz article.