If you are teaching a face-to-face class, you can easily find out whether your students are understanding course concepts. At minimum, you can ask students to self-report their comprehension by raising their hands or by using a classroom assessment technique that asks them to write down the muddiest points of the lecture. Alternatively, you can use student response systems (clickers) to gather more direct evidence of their understanding. But what if you want to gather information about student comprehension outside of class—either as part of a fully online course or in a flipped/hybrid setting?

Instructors can customize the feedback provided to students, pointing out common misconceptions or errors, or referencing content the student might need to review. In addition to grades, instructors can also view detailed information about each student’s performance—e.g., the number of attempts and the results from each one—as well as.

When students are expected to access course content on their own, how can an instructor know what the students are doing and whether they are understanding the materials? In Canvas, there is no built-in tool for this type of formative assessment, presenting a barrier for online instructors. Canvas Quizzes are fundamentally high-stakes, and cannot be presented in-line with course materials. Canvas Assignments allow more flexibility in how the content is presented, but they can’t provide the quick and automatically-graded feedback that is important for students to understand their progress. To fill this gap, Quick Check was developed here at IU.

What is Quick Check?
Quick Check enables instructors to almost seamlessly integrate frequent low-stakes assessments into course content in Canvas, giving students ongoing feedback on their learning and encouraging engagement with course content. Presenting questions as part of the content can be less intimidating to students than a more formal quiz. Several question types are available, including

• Multiple choice
• Multiple correct
• Matching
• Matrix
• Text match (i.e., fill in the blank)
• Multiple drop-downs
• Numerical

Hey, come and check out what my blog is all about with my welcome post. Enjoy:) Welcome to The Students Best Friend, my new friends! You can leave now if you don’t. When the student gets off the bus, another QR code for attendance tracking check out can then be scanned. Both the attendance tracking QR codes for check-in and check-out record the location that the QR codes are scanned. Doing this records the whereabouts of the students upon check-in and check-out.

These questions can be graded, with grades sent directly to the Canvas gradebook. Instructors can customize the feedback provided to students, pointing out common misconceptions or errors, or referencing content the student might need to review. In addition to grades, instructors can also view detailed information about each student’s performance—e.g., the number of attempts and the results from each one—as well as broader information about the performance of the entire class. This data can enable instructors to help individual students as well as tweak upcoming lectures or assignments for the entire class.

Who is using Quick Check?
Ben Motz uses Quick Check in his introductory Psychology class that is fully online with over 300 students. He wanted questions about content to be viewable within the content, so that students are not directed away from the materials that they are currently engaged with. Ben wanted summary statistics about the performance of his whole class on a particular question, as well as detailed information about how each student performed on particular questions. He found that Quick Check was able to do all these things, while being secure, reliable, and fully integrated into Canvas.

Start using Quick Check
If you are interested in using Quick Check, sign up for the pilot or view the overview video. You can view a recorded webinar about the tool in the Teaching Centers’ Kaltura channel.

Thank you to Ben Motz and Sue Hathaway for their assistance with this blog post.

8 Student Blogs To Check Outside

By Shawn Beard

Digital Learning has revolutionized the way teachers do business in education. Teachers now have the ability to communicate, plan, and teach more efficiently than ever before. One advancement that has allowed this type of change is Google Classroom.

If you’ve never used Classroom, here are eight things you probably didn’t know about this powerhouse tool.

More:20 Best Google Classroom Tips From Google Pros

1. Parent Notifications

Not only can you assign work, and provide feedback to your students through Google Classroom, but you can also keep parents in the loop. Just go to the Students menu on Google Classroom, and click the “Invite Guardians” link next to any student’s name to add their parent/guardian. Any email address will do—a Gmail account is not required.

Once added, parents/guardians will begin receiving email summaries outlining class activity, including missing work for their student, as well as upcoming work. Parents can choose to receive Daily or Weekly summaries. See a sample of an email summary here.

Once a parent/guardian email address is linked to a student, it is linked for the entire domain/district. Don’t want your class included in email summaries? You can opt out by turning the “Include this Class” switch off.

See more info about how I use this feature in my Google Classroom blog post.

2. Schedule Posts Ahead of Time

8 Student Blogs To Check Out People

Google Classroom gives teachers the advantage of assigning work at any time. However, if you want to plan ahead, you can schedule posts (assignments, announcements, questions) to be released at specific times. This is great if you want to make sure students don’t take a quiz ahead of time.

To schedule ahead, set up your post the way you want it, then click the drop down menu next to the Assign button and choose Schedule. You can select the date and time you want your post to appear in the stream. So sit back, relax and set up your entire week of assignments on Sunday afternoon, or whenever you’d like!

3. Tag Your Posts by Adding Topics

Want to keep your semester or year on Google Classroom organized? Try adding topics to your posts. When creating a post, click the Add Topic button. You can create topics of your choice. Once created, they can be re-used. So you can organize posts by Chapter, Units, Themes, Topics, or by Assignment Type. The sky’s the limit!

More:10 Personalized Learning Apps for the Classroom

8 Student Blogs To Check Out Work

4. Manage Your Stream

8 Student Blogs To Check Out Kids

Sometimes the stream can get too flooded, and it becomes difficult to scroll through everything to find the assignment you need. This can not only become frustrating for the teacher, but for the student as well. Google Classroom has a solution to help you manage the Stream.

Once you begin using Topics for posts in the stream, they’ll appear in a menu at the top left. Click on any topic to view only the items related to that topic. This makes it easier for students to quickly review what work they have completed, as well as any outstanding work.

Learn more in my blog post, Taming the Stream.

5. Individualize Instruction

Want to differentiate instruction for students by learning ability? Google Classroom gives you the ability to assign work to individuals. When creating a post, click the All Students drop down menu, and place a check next to each student you’d like to assign work to.

So if you need to differentiate by readiness, reading level, or if you’d like to create a learning mastery course allowing students to move at different paces, you can!

6. Ask a Question

Whether you’re looking for a bell-ringer activity, an exit ticket, or you’d just like to generate classroom discussion, Google Classroom has your solution. Just use the Create Question option when posting to the stream. If creating a discussion forum, choose Short Answer and apply settings to allow students to reply to each other. Want to poll the class? Choose multiple choice. When finished setting up your question, just click Ask!

More: 6 Simple Ways to Use Google Classroom Questions Feature

7. Add a Co-Teacher

Do you have a Teacher Aide? Do you work in a cohort where you share students with another teacher? Add a Co-Teacher to your Google Classroom course. Just go to the About menu, and click Invite Teachers. Add your co-teacher and click Invite. The recipient will see a invitation the next time they login go Google Classroom.

Co-Teachers can do anything the teacher can do, except delete a class. Need to remove a Co-Teacher? Just click the menu in their profile box and click Remove. It’s that easy.

8. Reuse a Post

Have you ever thrown something away and regretted it later? Maybe it was a lesson plan or project rubric that you needed next year. Never fear with Google Classroom. At the end of the school year, you can Archive courses and start fresh at the beginning of the next school year without worry.

Just choose the Reuse Post option. This post to the Stream allows you to Reuse any post from any class – current or archived – at any time. Just choose the class, choose the post, and then update the post to fit the needs of your current class!

Learn more here in my post, Back to School With Google Classroom.