Much needed Student Portal features!

Joseph Nicholas

1. More data regarding student portal submissions: How long they took on an assessment, when they started, when they submitted. 

Would be nice to have more data about the students' progress data per question and for the whole submission. Could be a useful tool to see if a student submitted a 30 question test in 1 minute I could immediately flag them as a potential cheater. 

2. More options for how M/C assignments are administered: For example, it would be nice if we could build multiple-choice questions within-grade cam directly.

Instead of it just being a pseudo virtual scantron with attached PDF's, have the actual question and answer choices visible within the student portal directly. Gradecam is amazing at bridging the gap of a hybrid class, but why stop halfway with the implementation of the student portal assigments?

For a multiple-choice question if we could attach individual documents(like an image or stimulus) as well as have a question header(like that already in fill in the blank questions)  and built-in multiple choice selection. That way when we assign a multiple choice quiz to the student portal, everything is self-contained and built directly into gradecam. (The .pdf attachments would be freed to add even more versatility) 

Currently, the only option for multiple versions of an M/C test is to build an exam outside Gradecam have the testgen software scramble it, print to .pdf the different versions, and upload each version and assign it to the appropriate key. Then assign the versions randomly to students.

Why not have the whole process within GradeCam directly?

3. Obscure the .pdf title in the student portal: Make it so that the file name of the PDF is not visible to students. Currently, students can see the file name they are given. If you name your test .pdf according to their version, the students know which version they have and if they are virtual can discreetly collaborate with students of the same version. The workaround is to name all the version .pdf that same name, but it can make it confusing while matching them to the appropriate key. 

4. Give an option to allow students to view all of the questions together, 5 at a time, or 1 at a time. (While also collecting data on the time spent on each question)

Thank you!

 

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Comments

3 comments

Date Votes
  • Donna Fairhurst

    Hi Joseph,

    Thank you for taking the time to submit the feature request.

    1. We now have the "In Progress" Filter   This allows you to view where the students are during the test and questions missed.

    2. We do not currently have anything on the timeline in the near future to add content which would be what you would want to type in the questions and add images, etc. The premise of GradeCam is to keep everything simple and quick which using material already built and quickly adding just the answers and not having to retype everything in the assignment is quick and easy.  This has been requested and on our radar.

    We do have the ability with versions to clone the version and then click and drag the questions to reorder or use the variations that allows you to map questions from the Primary key to Key B, Key C and so on.

    Using Versions and Variations

    3. & 4. I will definitely submit this request to our team. I don't think this has been requested before.

    Again, I appreciate you taking the time to share ideas and what would be some things that would allow GradeCam to work more efficiently for you.

    Regards,
    ~Donna

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  • Joseph Nicholas

    The in-progress filter does not retain any information to use for comparative analysis, once they submit you don't have any reference for how long they spent on the quiz or any individual question.

    The mapped variations work well with a matching fill-in-the-blank test, where you can add a question header(where you put a definition of a vocab term for example) and the .pdf attachment has a generic word bank that can apply to all the mapped variations. It does not help streamline or simplify multiple-choice variation creation because you would have to create individualized .pdf for each version outside of gradecam anyway. 

    If nothing else, it would be nice to be able to add a question header to multiple-choice questions as well.

    Even better would be having the ability to attach media(images or text) to each individual question to be viewed in the student portal.

    I get that gradecams whole MO is simple, but the logical step with the student portal is integrating the whole process to make the functionality of the student portal more useful for teachers.

    If teachers had the ability to make/transfer everything in gradecam directly it would open so many more doors for usability with the student portal. 

    With this teachers could potentially have Gradecam automatically randomize the questions and answer choices while pulling from a bank of questions imported or created by the teacher. 

    I realize this request is expensive in terms of man-hours for the creation and coding, but with these features, gradecam would be unparalleled in usability in a hybrid classroom. 

    I've been using any and all resources I can get ahold of to help teach during COVID times and gradecam is already a much more robust tool than many of gradecams competitors. Why would Gradecam settle for just being a simple tool when it could absolutely be the king of hybrid teaching platforms with a more developed student portal. 

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  • Donna Fairhurst

    Thank you. All great ideas which I have submitted to our team which is continually working to make the student portal better and better.

    Thank you,

    ~Donna

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