CeDo525: Electronic Student Response Technology Tools

When it comes to providing student feedback, in the past, I have created my own set of rubrics for various projects or have relied upon verbal feedback. My school does not provide a set of standards or tools that, so I have been left to develop them on my own. Honestly, because my students are so young and my typical role has been to teach students how to use computers, there hasn't been a great necessity for heavy grading. In fact, before I started at my school five years ago, computer classes did not give grades. Hence, the curriculum has been informative but a bit lacking in structure and goals, and so I have spent the last four years building a curriculum from scratch. Therefore, exploring the various online tools for student response has been fascinating. I'm sure many others in this course were already familiar with most of these sites, but I never realized the depth and wealth of tools some of these sites provide. Specifically, I explored Rubistar, iRubric, Quia and QuizStar, and although each provides numerous tools for the teachers, my recommendation is iRubric.

Both Rubistar and iRubric are free sites that allow teachers to create online rubrics. Both sites provide a gallery from which to choose, or allow the registered user to create one from scratch. In addition, both sites allow users to save, download, or print a rubric. Rubistar is perfect for teachers who don't have a lot of time to fuss over their rubric. Users may select from a variety of subject headings. Once a rubric is selected, the user simply chooses the category to be evaluated from a drop-down menu. Each criteria appears, according to the category selected. A nice feature of Rubistar is its editing feature that allows users to tweek and modify where necessary. Once finished, the rubric may be previewed and then saved or printed from there. iRubric does much of the same; however, iRubric is just a small part of RCampus - a free, online educational management system that gives teachers the ability to create classes, gradebooks, tutorials, and websites. Therefore, iRubric doesn't just create rubrics; it goes many steps farther and allows users to "test" a rubric and automatically compute scores. In addition, in terms of communication, RCampus is completely web-based so both teachers and students can access their information from anywhere and is an excellent source for providing feedback in all forms, not just rubrics. I can't wait to explore this site more and introduce it to my teachers in the fall as a way for them to post student work and communicate with both students and parents.

As their names suggest, both Quia and QuizStar give teachers a way to create quizzes online. Each provides a free trial, after which a paid subscription is required. Quia creates customized templates in a variety of forms, from traditional multiple-choice quizzes to interactive games, such as hangman or battleship. A nice feature of Quia is the teacher's ability to add audio, making it more suitable for students with varied learning capabilities. For teachers who don't have a lot of time, Quia also includes easy-to-use templates as well as a large gallery of shared quizzes from other teachers. Creating quizzes doesn't save time, however, if the teacher must then grade each one, so Quia also includes automatic grading and posting of results. A subscription to Quia is a bit hefty in my opinion, at $49 but might be worth it to the teacher whose student assessment requires this type of evaluation. QuizStar, powered by 4Teachers, the same creator of Rubistar, works much the same way but doesn't appear to have the flexibility and scope of Quia. Registered users may utilize the site for free for 60 days and then opt to subscribe for $39/year. Quizstar also automatically grades and posts student achievement but Quizstar's creative resources are very limited. Users are allowed to use other teacher quizzes but only with permission, provided by the creator in the form of a code. It sounds a bit too complicated. In addition, Quizstar's quizzes are basic, multiple-choice types of quizzes. There are no options for games or other activities that Quia provides. For my personal use, I found neither site very impressive and worth the annual subscription. The web offers many other choice polling-type tools, Survey Monkey being one, that accomplish the same goal. Although either site is an excellent way to provide student feedback, neither one justifies the expense.