Tag: Schoology

Schoology – Requiring Assessment Mastery Before Moving on

In Sal Khan’s phenomenal TED Talk Let’s Teach for Mastery – Not Test Scores, he illustrates the lack of focus on mastery in most classrooms with this metaphor:

To appreciate how absurd [teaching based on a pacing guide, not mastery] is, imagine if we did other things in our life that way. Say, home-building.

So we bring in the contractor and say, “We were told we have two weeks to build a foundation. Do what you can.”

So they do what they can. Maybe it rains. Maybe some of the supplies don’t show up. And two weeks later, the inspector comes, looks around, says, “OK, the concrete is still wet right over there, that part’s not quite up to code … I’ll give it an 80 percent.”

You say, “Great! That’s a C. Let’s build the first floor.”

He continues with this great metaphor, but I’ll stop there because the point is clear: it’s silly to have students move to the next topic or skill before they’ve mastered the one they’re on.  With technology, we have tons of ways to ensure this mastery.

In Schoology, you can require students exceed a minimum assessment score prior to moving on to the upcoming content.  And, if they don’t do well enough?  Have them learn from their mistakes, get better, re-take the assessment and then move on.

Here’s how to do it, first in GIF form and then in step-by-step form.

Requiring Test Mastery in Schoology Animation

  1. Go to the Materials Page for your course.
  2. Click Add Materials > Assessment.
  3. Create your Assessment.
  4. Include in the instructions a note about the minimum score and their ability to retake the assessment.
  5. Go to “Settings” inside of the assessment.
  6. Change the Attempt Limit to Unlimited (or some other greater than 1 option)
  7. Decide how you’d like it to be graded.  I go with “highest score.”
  8. Turn on Submissions (if you’re ready)
  9. Go back to your materials page.
  10. Click on Options > Student Completion.
  11. Set up Student Completion for your pages and assignments.
  12. For the Assessment, Select “Member must score at least” and enter the minimum score you’d like students to obtain.

Embedding Google Docs in Schoology “Pages”

Pages are a nice Materials option in Schoology.  They give a teacher the ability to include more flexible learning content and are awesome in blended courses.

Sometimes you may want to add an already created Google Doc (or slides, sheet, etc.) along with some text content in a page.  Below is how you can do that (note that if you want just the doc without other content before or after it, you’d follow a different process).  First is an animated GIF, followed by the step-by-step instructions.

Add Doc into Schoology Page Animation

  1. Make sure you’ve connected the Google Drive App.
    1. (inside Resources > Apps)
  2. Create your Google Doc
  3. Go to Materials Page in your Schoology Course
  4. Click Add Materials
  5. Click Add Page
  6. Click the Insert Content Button
  7. Select the Google Drive Resource App
  8. Click the checkbox by the file you want to add
  9. Click Insert > Embed.
  10. Add text or other content before or after the doc if you’d like.

Embedding Google Forms in Schoology

Schoology offers a quality platform for classroom assessments, but no platform for collecting information that isn’t intended to be an assessment.  In that situation, Google Forms is a great option.  However, using a link and forcing students to go “out” of Schoology can be inconvenient and lead to some internet-wandering.  So, let’s embed the Google From right into Schoology!  Forms can be embedded in pages as well as assignments.

This is beneficial in a number of other situations:

  • Schoology assessments can’t differentiate based on answers (i.e., seeing remedial content after getting a question wrong), but Forms can.
  • If the data coming from the questions is actually going to someone else (i.e., your school guidance counselor), you’d be able to share the Google Forms results easily with them.
  • If you’re looking to trigger some action (i.e., mail merge) with the responses, the Add-Ons offered in Google Sheets would work.
  • If you’re looking to use the functionality offered by Google Forms Add-Ons like FormRanger and FormLimiter.
  • If you need to use formulas or create data representations, Google Sheets are ideal.

Option 1: Add as an External Tool

This option requires the least steps, but has one major drawback – you can’t include any other text or images on the Schoology “page” – just the content from the form.  (If you need to include other stuff, check out Option 2, below).

Check out the GIF below, followed by step-by-step instructions, to see how to do this:

Embed Form as External Tool in Schoology Animation

Option 2: Embed the Form into a Page, Assignment or Discussion

This option is preferable if you’d like to add some text or other content on the same “screen” as the form.

Check out the GIF below, followed by step-by-step instructions, to see how to do this:

Embed Form in Schoology Animation

  1. Create your Google Form.
  2. Click the Send (paper airplane) button.
  3. Select the <> Embed option.
  4. Modify the dimensions, if you’d like.  You can do that in Schoology later as well.
  5. Click on the embed code.
  6. Click Copy.
  7. Go to your class Materials page in Schoology.
  8. Click Add Materials.
  9. Click Add Page (or whatever option you’re choosing).
  10. Click the button on the right, above the text box, with the two dots.  It’s the Switch to HTML View button.  (If you’re in an Assignment, you may have to click a > button to get to the expanded view)
  11. Paste the embed code.
  12. Click Create and you’re done!
  13. If you switch back to the Standard View, you can also enter other content (text, pictures, etc.) above or below the Google Form.

Schoology: Creating Course Content Prior to the Course

Many educators spend time over the summer working on content for their courses.  If you use Schoology, you can create actual Schoology content for your courses before they actually start. Check out this GIF (and the list of steps below it) to see how:

Create Schoology Content in Resources Animation

  1. Go to Resources > Personal
  2. Open or Create a Resource Folder (not necessary, but let’s be organized!)
  3. Click on Add Resource and create your content
  4. When your course starts, add the content from your resources!