Apps for Conducting Assessment on a Tablet

On Wednesday, May 8, Illinois Central College hosted the first regional assessment fair. Brandy Thatcher, Instructional Media Developer presented one of the break-out sessions on the topic of using a tablet to conduct assessment. While the ultimate conclusion is that you can not accomplish full formative assessment on a tablet, you can use the tablet to complete many task that support assessment.

The main reasons that you can not use a tablet for all of your assessment, is real estate! Who wants to sit in front of an 8 or 10 inch screen for hours attempting to grade papers and insert comments or type in a gradebook. If you are going to use a wireless keyboard you'll need a table or desk and you might as well move to a computer.

The tablet still has many uses, though. The easiest use is for a second screen. If you are entering grades and comments for any multimedia assignment: videos, web pages, graphics, etc... The ability to view the work on the tablet and enter your feedback in the grade book on your laptop or computer is very convenient.

Many of the learning management system apps, such as Blackboard, are very limited in what a teacher can accomplish with them. Few allow you access to the grade book or grade center. Most do allow full access to the discussion board. However, you can not grade discussion board items from the app. If you teach online and use the discussion board extensively, this is a great way to monitor the discussion and give quick replies. Having the ability to respond to a student discussion on the go makes the app a valuable tool. Many of the learning management systems are working on enhancing their apps, so that teachers can do more assessment on a tablet, look for these features in the next year.

Newer tablets almost always have a camera and video is a good assessment tool for many different disciplines. The tablet camera app can be used to record demonstrations, student speeches, student projects or the instructor. The video can be used simply as a reflection tool in the classroom or can easily be posted online for supplemental instruction and review.

There are several free whiteboard apps for recording demonstrations of annotating a number of sources, while providing audio commentary. These recordings can be published to a website account and embedded into course management systems. The recommended whiteboards apps are ShowMe and Educreations. There are several other apps for proving annotation on documents, audio and video feedback. View the slideshow below to learn more about the recommended apps demonstrated in the assessment fair session.

Assessment Fair 2013: Using Tablets to Conduct Assessment from bthat

What apps are you using for assessment??

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