As almost 2 months have passed since we went into coronavirus mode, schools are starting to think about conducting their online assessments, particularly chapter tests and midterm exams. In this article, I’m hoping to clear up some of the common misconceptions of using online assessment tools and breakdown why it matters.
Let’s take one step back first to ask ourselves: what are teacher’s typically assessing?
中国的新冠疫情防控已达两个月，学校也到思考在线评价的节点，特别是单元测试和期中测试。这篇文章，我想梳理对在线评价工具的常见误解并分析在线评价工具的重要性。
让我们后退一步，先思考：老师们通常评价什么？
What types of assessments are there? 教学评价有哪些类型？
There are normally 2 types of assessments: Summative and Formative assessments 通常分为两类：总结性评价和过程性评价
The first is our typical summative assessment which involves final exams, chapter tests, etc. These are used to evaluate student learning at the end of a chapter or course by comparing with some standard or benchmark. With the advancement of online software, most of our tests can now automatically graded and completely paperless, saving teachers hours of time and effort. Moreover, test software also helps instructors to be able to view test reports after test to see where students are struggling, manage learners through online class systems and award any certificates or accomplishment to students.
典型的总结性评价包括期末考试，单元测试，等等。这些用于在单元或课程教学结束时，通过对比教学标准和指标来考察学生的学习效果。借助在线软件，现在很多测试能自动评分和完全无纸化，节省老师大量时间和精力。另外，测评软件还能帮助老师分析测试结果，找到学生的学习盲点，管理在线课堂系统，以及给学生发布课程证书或完成认证。
The second is the formative assessment such as quizzes, assignments, journals and even vlogs... These are used to monitor student learning and provide ongoing feedback that can be used by teachers to improve their teaching skills as well as by students to improve their learning. This is particularly important for us at this moment and will be the focus of this article today.
过程性评价包括小测，作业，日记，甚至视频博客……这些用于监督学生的学习进度并给予阶段性反馈，能够同时帮助老师改进教学和帮助学生提高学习效果。过程性评价在疫情防控期间的教学尤其重要，也是今天这篇文章的重点。
There’s no one size fits all approach to assessments 没有一种放之四海而皆准的评价方式
There are many different types of assessments you can conduct online from tests to projects to essays. Each of these assessments have particular advantages or disadvantages and thus you must evaluate which is appropriate, depending on what you want to assess. Below is a chart for you to weigh out the types of assessments.
从测试到项目到论文，您可以在线上设计不同的评价方式。任何一种评价方式都有特定的优点和缺点，因此需要根据评估目标决定哪种合适。不同评价方式的对比，请见下表。
What should we be assessing? 我们应该评价什么？
Assessments should really be about measuring learning outcomes. And learning outcomes should be about students demonstrating what they know, and more importantly, what they can do (skills). Learning outcomes can be low-level (recalling information) or high-level (analyzing information). A great, time-tested resource to help us understand the various levels of learning, which we can then assess, is Bloom’s Taxonomy.
评价应该是衡量学习成果，而学习成果应该是学生展示他们所知道的，以及更重要的是，他们所能做的(技能)。学习成果可以低层次的(回忆信息)或高层次的(分析信息)。布鲁姆分类是一个很好的、经过时间考验的工具，有助我们了解和测试不同层次的学习。
Now let’s jump into the benefits of online assessments 现在，我们来看看线上教学评价有哪些好处：
There are many benefits to doing online-based assessments, most notably enabling students to do dynamic and individualized formative assessments, reducing grading workload (yay!), provide critical data for instructors and supports the feedback process for students (Burns, 2018). But what makes it a truly good assessment tool?
最值得注意的好处是学生可以通过动态的、个性化的方式去展现他们的学习成果，而老师能减少评卷工作量（棒！），获得重要数据并给学生过程性反馈（Burn, 2018)。那么，什么才是优秀的线上教学评价工具呢？
At our school, we’ve recently taken on a simple to use formative assessment (quizzing) tool called Socrative, that you can use to create Multiple Choice Questions, T/F questions & short answer questions on. There are unlimited quizzes you can create and the results are instantaneous and customizable to your student. If designed well, this tool can act as a form of individualized feedback to students who have not grasped the concept or have misunderstood some concepts which they did not know about before.
我们学校目前在用的一个过程性评价工具（小测）叫做Socrative，在上面可以设置单选题，对错题和简答题。小测数量没有限制，小测结果可即时并自定义发送给学生。如果设计得好，这个工具可以给学生个性化反馈，帮助学生自查没有掌握的或误解的概念。
What makes Socrative a good assessment tool? 凭什么成为优秀的在线测试工具？
Well designed interface and question types 精心设计的交互界面和问题类型
Socrative provides a really simple interface to use that is suited for an educator’s needs.
They provide 3 simple type of question types, namely the multiple choice, True or False & short answers. It also allows you to input images into your questions (particularly math or science equations that would take forever to type up). The interface is also well built for quizzing, timed completion races (this is useful if you want to setup for live competition) and exit tickets (before students leave class, helps teachers to know who is struggling and for students to reflect on what they learnt).
Socrative的交互界面很简单，对教育者非常友好。三种简单的问题类型：单选题，对错题和简答题。您还可以在问题中插入图片（数学和科学公式一键插入，打字半天不存在的）。界面专为小测，限时比赛（特别是比赛直播）和课堂反馈（学生在下课前完成，反思这节课学习的内容，也帮助老师了解学生的学习情况）设计。
Seeks to prevent cheating 有效防止作弊
Cheating is one of those things which cannot fully be prevented but can definitely be mitigated. Socrative does this well by providing the following items:
1. Requires name of participant – This will help to authenticate student’s name which is correlated to 1 ID each (click on the toggle to turn that on).
2. Able to shuffle questions – This will cause the whole test to be different for each student because they will have a different order to questions. It’s hard to cheat this way (unless they copy down all the questions, but if time is limited then it will be impossible to do so and do the test at the same time).
3. Able to shuffle answers – This will cause the answers for multiple choice questions to be shifted, so if students communicate with each other only using answers, they will get it wrong anyway (unless they also send the questions).
4. One attempt – Provides each student with one single attempt to do the quiz (assessment) based on the location of their internet provider. This will prevent a student trying to complete the quiz again from his laptop using another name.
作弊绝对可以被减少，虽然无法被杜绝。Socrative在这方面做得好，取决于以下几点：
1. 要求参与者输入名字——这样能实名并使参与者与虚拟ID一一对应（记得把这个按钮打开）
2. 能够滚动问题——所有学生的测试卷都是不同的，因为问题循序是打乱的。这样很难作弊（除非学生复制下所有问题，但时间有限，这样做的话他们不可能完成测试）。
3. 能够滚动回答——单选题的选项顺序也是打乱的，如果学生互相对答案，他们会得到错误的选项答案（除非他们同时发送原题和所有选项）。
4. 只有一次机会——学生只能进行一次小测（测试），这可以通过网络运营商地址判断。杜绝学生用另一个用户名重复进行小测。
Lastly, downloadable data is extremely key. 最后，数据能被下载，这点极其重要。
With Socrative, you will be able to download a full report with all your students’ performance of the quizzes and be able to better assess their performance. More importantly, you can also see a live screenshot of how they’re doing on the test to be able to track how far they have come, what they’re getting stuck on and also whether or not they’re cheating (cause typically their answers would pop up at the same time).
用Socrative，您能下载所有学生的测试报告，并能用此去分析他们的学习效果。更重要的是，您还能看到他们做测试的实时界面，直观地看到他们做到哪里了，在哪道题被卡住，以及他们有没有作弊（作弊的话，问题可能会同时出现）。
There are Downsides to Socrative however which includes:
- Limited question types(other quizzing tools such as Flexi Quiz offers up to 7 question types)
- Limited in number of students per room(this is inevitable as every software company will set restrictions on the free usage, so get the Pro for more. It’s up to 150 students per room for the Pro).
但是，Socrative也有缺点：
• 问题类型有限（其他测试工具如Flexi Quiz提供7种问题类型）
• 每个房间的学生人数有限（无法避免，所有软件公司都对免费用户设置限制，家里有矿的话买个Pro账户就好了。Pro账户的房间学生人数能到150）。
Finally, here are some tips for making good online formative quizzes for Socrative 最后的最后，用好Socrative的攻略：
• For higher-level questions (e.g., focusing on analysis, synthesis or evaluation), the stem should have more information, but it should still be brief.
• Make responses direct, with no extra, meaningless information. The learner should never be able to guess the correct answer from the way the response is written.
• Don’t use "All of the above" or "None of the above". Those alternatives reward learners who don’t know the answers. If you MUST use "None of the Above", use with caution.
• Pay attention to language. Avoid grammar, spelling, and mechanics errors which may make it difficult for students to even determine what possible responses are saying.
• Avoid categorical terms—always, never. There’s no such thing as "always" or "never", and this is a giveaway.
• Avoid double negatives (try not to include don’t try not to…)
• Use 4 possible responses, not 3. Three makes it more likely that students will guess the correct response
• Each question should stand alone. Don’t relate or connect questions. We want to avoid "double jeopardy" where if a learner answers one question incorrectly, another answer will also be incorrect.
• 高层次的问题（如，侧重分析，归纳和评价），描述囊括足够信息，同时要简洁。
• 提问直接了当，没有额外的、无意义的信息。学生不能通过老师的提问方式猜到可能的答案。
• 别用“以上皆是”或“以上皆不是”。这太便宜哪些根本不知道答案是啥的学生了。如果非要用”以上皆不是“，我只能说小心点。
• 注意用语。避免会导致学生误解题干的语法、拼写和表述上的错误。
• 避免程度性词汇——“总是”，“从不”。这种词汇太绝对，一看就是送分题。
• 避免双重否定（例如，“不要试着不去做……”）
• 用4个选项，而不是3个。3个的话，蒙中正确答案的概率更高。
• 提独立的问题。问题之间不要有关联。避免“一错再错”，即如果学生答错一道题，接下来的题目也一定会答错。
Main contributor: Nicholas Tan 尼克老师
Co-contributor: Bridget Huang 黄春华
Reference 参考文献:
Burns, Mary (2018) 15 Benefits Of Computer-Based Testing
https://elearningindustry.com/15-benefits-of-computer-based-testing
Burns, Mary (2018) 5 Guidelines For Developing Good Online Assessments
https://elearningindustry.com/developing-good-online-assessments-guidelines