Student Experience: Focus Areas Overview
Students work through Focus Areas to build background Content Knowledge and check for understanding through Content Assessments. For each Focus Area, students will be able to see:
- Diagnostic Assessments: Allow students to gauge their mastery of a Focus Area by answering practice questions that will not impact their grade.
- Description: Includes the objectives that students will meet and key terms they should know.
- Key Terms: A list of important keywords or terms in the Focus Area.
- Objectives: Objectives guide students in achieving overall mastery of a Focus Area. By clicking into an objective, a student will open up a set of resources that will help them with that specific objective. When a student clicks a resource, a checkmark will show to the right of that resource.
- Resources: Students can choose to edit or work on their Focus Area Resources in Notebooks.
- Content Assessments: Allow students to demonstrate their mastery of the Focus Area by answering a set of 10 questions. A student must request to take a Content Assessment. They are approved by the student's teacher or admin.
- Feedback on Finished Assessments: A student can click "See All Takes" to review their assessment.
Student Experience: Assessments
Diagnostic Assessments
Students can take Diagnostic Assessments as many times as they'd like without requesting approval from a teacher by clicking Start Diagnostic Assessment.
Content Assessments
Students will need to request approval from a teacher to take Content Assessments. Once a student has clicked Request Content Assessment, they will need to wait until the request has been approved. Once approved, students will have 10 minutes to begin taking the Content Assessment by clicking Start Assessment. Students will then have 90 minutes to complete a Content Assessment unless arrangements have been made to add extra time.
Multiple Choice Elimination
Students can "eliminate" an answer choice they think is wrong when taking a Content Assessment.
If you hover the mouse over an answer choice, an "X" will appear to the right of it. Clicking this "X" will eliminate or grey out the answer choice.
If an answer choice does get greyed out, it cannot be chosen as the correct answer. All greyed-out answers can be restored by clicking the arrow that appears next to it or by clicking the answer bubble. This will make the answer open for selection again.
Content Assessment Grading
After a diagnostic or Content Assessment is taken, a score will show to the left of each objective to let students know how they scored on questions from those sections. The score will show a student's highest assessment take with Content Assessments taking priority over diagnostic takes.
When students pass the Content Assessment, the title of the Focus Area turns green. Whenever students encounter this Focus Area in the platform (ex: on the This Year section), it will also be colored green.
Text-to-Speech on Assessments
The text-to-speech on content and diagnostic assessments feature can be enabled for students with IEP/504/ELD plans that require the read-aloud accommodation.
For students who have text-to-speech on assessments enabled, they will see text-to-speech icons next to the question prompt, question-answer options, and passages within their assessments. To hear the text read aloud, students select the icons.
Students are able to adjust the speed at which the text-to-speech tool reads their assessments aloud. To do so, students select the text-to-speech icon on their assessment, to see the currently set speed, and then can select from a drop-down of speed options to adjust the speed. The speed will default to the most recent previously selected speed.
More information on how to enable the text-to-speech on assessments feature for students can be found here.