Ed Tech in Action: D2L Assignment Types

Considering new ways to assess student learning?  Check out some of the different assignment options now offered in Desire2Learn! D2L recently added 3 new assignment type options: observed in person, text submission, and on paper submission. These assignment types will allow you to link a rubric and objectives and choose when to publish feedback to students just like file submission assignments.

Dr. Shannon Peterson has introduced “observed in person” assignments in the DPT CA Musculoskeletal Lower Quad course to assess two practical assessments. Having both the rubric and comments on one page makes it easy to use. Both can be accessed without extra clicks helping with the efficiency during testing situations. The rubric is simple to use and has two viewing options if you want to see the details of the grading criteria.

One challenge from a course coordinator perspective is viewing overall performance on the assignment before feedback is published for the students. A solution to this challenge includes “hiding” the assignment and the gradebook item from student view. Once you have reviewed the results and wish to make the feedback visible to students you again adjust the visibility settings for both the assignment and gradebook item.

Additional Tips:

• Rubric Permissions. When setting up the rubric for these assignments you can specify if the rubric should be visible for students to view before feedback is published. If a rubric needs to be kept private, you can also specify that a rubric should never be visible to the student.
  Rubric Permissions
  
• Groups. If you have multiple graders for an assignment split up the work using user groups. You can filter the list of students by user group using the View By options in the user search parameters within assignments.
  Create a Group
  Filter User Search Criteria

If you have any questions or would like to work through an idea for a future assessment, please contact the DMU Help Desk and we’d love to collaborate!

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Ed Tech in Action: Zoom Polling

Feeling confident hosting your Zoom sessions and ready to try something new?  Give Zoom polls a try!  It’s an easy way to add an additional layer of engagement and interaction to your Zoom lectures and meetings.  Zoom’s polling feature allows you to add multiple choice questions and launch them directly in the Zoom application for formative assessment or to gather quick feedback from your students or meeting attendees.

The DMU Anatomy Department has shown great resilience in their ability to adapt instruction to an online format during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the use of Zoom polls.  Dr. Matz presented “Adapting Human Anatomy Instruction During a Pandemic: Lessons Learned and Future Directions” on February 16, 2021, as part of the CEE Faculty Development Series.

The Anatomy Department expanded use of Visible Body virtual anatomy software to supplement synchronous lab instruction delivered virtually through Zoom.  Lectures have also been delivered synchronously through Zoom, and Dr. Matz shared that many of the Anatomy faculty have had great success with Zoom polling for formative assessment.  Adding Zoom polls to a lecture helps break up the presentation, and students reported feeling more engaged.

Here are some tips for using Zoom polls in your courses:

• Practice.  Schedule a time with other faculty to take turns managing and responding to polls so you can see what Zoom polls look like from both the faculty side and the student side.
• Set expectations.  Let your students know you’ll be using Zoom polls and explain how they work the first time you use one.  If you’ll have a time limit for each question, let students know what it is or give a final warning before closing the poll.
• Generic/reusable poll question.  If your PowerPoint slides already contain multiple choice questions, you can create a generic Zoom poll to reuse, rather than creating a separate Zoom poll for each question.

Image from Dr. Matz’s Faculty Development Series presentation

For more information about Zoom polling, view our Zoom polling knowledge base article.  Or click here to request assistance with Zoom polling or other Zoom features.  To access a recording and slides from Dr. Matz’s presentation, visit CEE’s Faculty Development Series archive.