Assessment and feedback

Sections
​Introduction​
​Assessments​
​Grading assessments​
​Gradebook view​
​Feedback loop​
Learning objectives
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
Utilize the available assessments within Pamoja Lesson Suite courses as they are or make edits/additions as needed.
View submissions through the Tasks & Units tab or the Gradebook tab.
Annotate submissions using the annotation tool.
Use the messaging tool to have a conversation with students about tasks and feedback.
Saving time with online assessment
Over the past decade of course delivery online, Pamoja Education has not found online course work (typed answers) to have a negative effect on final IB exams (which are handwritten). All Pamoja students handwrite their Year 1 end-of-year exams and Year 2 mock exams. These are completed under IB testing conditions in their local school and submitted (via scans) to Pamoja. Outside of the mock exams, the majority of testing is completed online.
What about learning to handwrite under timed conditions?
This is the beauty of a blended learning model. You don’t have to be one or the other but can help students learn both approaches. You can require students to type some tasks and handwrite other tasks to keep a balance. 
Assessments
Available assessments in Pamoja Lesson Suite and ManageBac
The Subject Matter Experts for each Pamoja Lesson Suite course have carefully selected and crafted all of the assessments in the courses. They have been refined over a number of years and come with full supporting materials such as rubrics, mark schemes, advise and review. In most cases, two or more IB experienced teachers (usually examiners) have written the assessments in collaboration. This means they are very valuable to you as tools for learning, as well as major time savers on your part.  
Pamoja Lesson Suite courses use two types of assessments: formative and summative. Formative assessments are designed to help students with learning the content while the summative assessments are designed to assess student learning. 
Teachers can edit or add tasks as they need. When creating a task, teachers have the following categories to select from:
Quiz
Journal
Essay
Presentation
Test
Writing
Discussion
Content Production
Collaboration
Worksheet
Practice
Problem Set
Conversation
Other
The categories can be configured for all subjects by an admin within your programme settings, or customized further on a class-by-class basis via Manage Categories.
Graded assessments can be formatted to have assigned points by defining the maximum possible points, or can be based on teacher feedback or comments. 
Grading assessments
Viewing student submissions
Teachers are able to view their students' submissions through the Tasks & Units tab. From that page, they will select the specific task and navigate to the Dropbox section. A table with a student list and their submissions will be visible. 
Grading and annotating submissions
From the list of submissions, teachers can either select the student name or the Annotate and Grade "eye" icon for a specific student to open that submission.
It is worth noting that teachers are also able to download submissions if needed, as well as view the turnitin plagiarism report if enabled for their organization. 
When a submission is selected, the teacher will be able to view the work that has been submitted by a specific student of choice. This view will allow teachers to directly annotate the assignment using the annotation tool bar, and add a grade. The N/A option can be selected instead of adding a grade when assigning a grade isn't an appropriate option. An example would be if the assignment was submitted late. The teacher may want to provide personalized feedback by adding annotations but no grade will be given to the work. 
Gradebook view of submissions
Teachers are able to view submissions from the Gradebook tab. A list of students will display and a column will represent each assigned task. 
Tasks that have already been graded will display the grade assigned for each student in the relevant column.
Teachers can grade assignments per students or per the assigned tasks. To view all submissions for a specific student, simply select the student name and it will display all submissions for that student.
Selecting the task will display the students who submitted that specific task and teachers can select to annotate and grade from there, or directly add a grade or select N/A.
Feedback loop
Two-way conversation between the teacher and the student
Have you ever experienced a learning moment when a student comes to you to get feedback from an assessment? Can you imagine this highly engaged student interacting with you about how and why they received the score they did? How often is this verbal exchange recorded? Will the student remember the bulk of your conversation a month later, or six months later? Even the best note takers will not capture the entirety of the learning.
Online assessment and feedback in ManageBac allows for the creation of an enduring resource of teacher-student exchanges. Even a year later the student can revisit fully recorded assessment review and explanations with full recall.  
As you have learned so far, ManageBac allows for teachers to provide typed annotation on the assessment. In this section, we will explain how the students can interact in a conversation with the teacher around a specific task or piece of feedback.
Task-related messages
Within each task, students have the ability to post messages. The message posted can be public and viewable by all students or can be a private one. Examples of a public message would be regarding rubrics or asking for additional resources. A private message will only be seen the teacher. The private conversation between the teacher and the student is an opportunity to ask questions about the submitted feedback or grade, and can be a continuation of the learning process to further advance student understanding. 