This post examines "Assignments" on TextActivities. (For those familiar with Textivate, "assignments" are similar to Textivate's "sequences", but they work very differently. See section 1 (xiii) in this blog post comparing TextActivities and Textivate.)
SETTING AN ASSIGNMENT
On TextActivities.com teachers can set assignments based on any resource to which they have access.
Assignments are set within a Class, and as long as you have already set up at least one class, you can set an assignment in one of two ways:
ASSIGNMENT VIA RESOURCE
Click on the "Set assignment" button at the top of the resource and choose the class to which you wish to set an assignment.
ASSIGNMENT VIA CLASS
Click on the "New Assignment" button in the Class itself.
CHOOSING ASSIGNMENT TASKS
Assignments can include any of the activities that are available for a particular resource. Simply navigate the activity menu which appears on the Class page as part of the "New Assignment" popup.
You can include up to 20 assignment activities to an Assignment by using the activity menu to select activities.
PRE-DEFINED ASSIGNMENTS
A quick way of populating a list of activities for your assignment is to select one of the pre-defined assignments. Activities generally move from easier to more challenging, and they include a mix of activities, and usually one or more "assessment" activities (of which more below).
Once added to your assignment, the activities can be moved around, deleted, or the various parameters (see below) can be modified to suit your needs.
You can also add activities to a pre-defined assignment by selecting them from the activity menu, up to a maximum of 20 activities in total.
ASSIGNMENT ACTIVITY PARAMETERS
Once activities have been added to the Assignment, you can set various parameters for each activity, including things such as:
- % In Play
- Mode / TTS
- Parallel extras
- Passmark
- Score mode
These are explained below:
% In Play
This determines how much of the resource is in play for the assignment activity. It is a great way of lessening the overall impact / time required for a particular activity, although it pays to be familiar with the resource content when setting this.
For Vocab / Matching activities, this metric affects the percentage of the total number of matching items that will be used for the activity. 100% means that all items will be used. A lower percentage means that fewer items will be used, so fewer interactions will be required from students. It's a good idea to be familiar with the number of matching items included in your resource, so that the percentage value has some meaning to you. In any case, a minimum of 5 matching items will be used (provided the resource contains 5 or more items).
For Text Rebuild activities, this metric affects the percentage of the words or spaces in the text that will be part of the activity, and therefore the number of interactions required from students. 100% means that all words / spaces are included. A lower percentage means that fewer words or spaces are included. This metric only affects the Space and Spelling activities.
Mode / TTS etc
For Vocab / Matching activities, this is the place where you decide what sort of Match activity you would like students to do. There may be up to 6 modes to choose from, 3 with L1 outputs and 3 with L2 outputs.
-
L2 text >> L1 text
L2 as text prompt, answers as L1 text. This mode is a reading mode, essentially, and requires students to identify the L1 meaning of a piece of L2 text. -
L2 audio >> L1 text
L2 TTS audio as prompt, answers as L1 text. This mode is a listening mode, requiring students to listen to an L2 audio prompt and identify the correct L1 text. -
L2 audio + L2 text >> L1 text
L2 TTS audio and L2 text as prompt, answers as L1 text. Combining listening and reading, this mode presents students with the L2 item in spoken and written form, and requires them to identify the correct L1 text. -
L1 text >> L2 text
L1 text as prompt, L2 text as answers. Translation to L2, essentially. This mode presents the student with an L1 written prompt, and it requires them to (a) identify the corresponging L2 text, or (b) rebuild the corresponding L2 text. -
L2 audio >> L2 text
L2 TTS audio as prompt, answers as L2 text.Dictation activities, essentially. This mode presents the student with an L2 audio prompt, and it requires them to (a) identify the corresponding L2 written form, or (b) rebuild the corresponding L2 text. -
L2 audio + L1 text >> L2 text
L2 TTS audio and L1 text as prompt, answers as L2 text. This mode combines translation and dictation. It has the benefit of presenting the spoken form, but with the L1 provided to reinforce meaning, and requires the student to (a) identify the corresponding L2 written form, or (b) rebuild the corresponding L2 text.
For Text Rebuild activiites, this mode selector allows you to decide whether or not to add TTS to an activity. Adding TTS turns simple text rebuild activities -- where students have to use context clues and knowledge of vocabulary and grammar to help them rebuild the text -- into scaffolded dictation activiites. (See this blog post all about dictation-like activity options on TextActivities).
Parallel extras
If the resource that you are using for your assignment has a parallel text, video, audio file, or image, these can be added to the activities on a per activity basis. This means, for example, that you can specify that you want the parallel text to appear for a text rebuild activity, turning it into a translation activity. Or adding the parallel text to a text rebuild activity which already has TTS enabled turns it into a combined dictation / translation activity.
Passmark
Most activities allow you to add a % passmark (from 20% to 80%). If a passmark is set, students will be encouraged (rather than forced) to redo the activity when they have finished it. See the image below:
Score mode
By default, all assignment activities work in such a way that students have to keep going until they have all of the answers correct, and then a score is calculated based on the accuracy of the student interactions.
i.e. Correct interactions ÷ total interactions = % score
However, certain activities (especially the more "gamey" ones) don't necessarily work well with the default scoring system, and you may prefer the assignment to simply record the fact that the activity was completed. If you choose this option, the score will always be 100% (provided they at least make 1 interaction!) and only 1 interaction will be recorded. The advantage of this is that these "games", if offered along with more challenging activities, will only have a very minimal impact on the overall assignment score. Note that the "Memory pairs" activities are only available in "completion only" mode.
The other score mode available for most activities is...
ASSESSMENT MODE
Assessment mode is new in TextActivities. In assessment mode, the student's first interaction is accepted, the correct response is provided and the score reflects the accuracy of the inital interaction.
So, for example, if the student is typing out the text for a letters activity, whatever letter they press the correct letter will be added, and their score will change to reflect whether or not the letter they typed was correct.
Assessment mode has a different look and feel, as you can see in the image above. Students are notified at the beginning of every assignment activity which has been set in assessment mode.
The score in assessment mode is calculated in a similar way to the default, but the BIG difference is that students are awarded a score that reflects their first attempt at all interactions.
RESOURCE PREVIEW / MID-ACTIVITY RESTARTS
By default, students do not have access to the text and/or matching data for the resource when they do an assignment.
If you click to "allow resource preview", students see a preview containing all of the resource info, so that they can study the info before they embark on the activities that make up the assignment.
This preview is available at the start of every new activity in the assignment too.
Mid-activity restarts
By default, students do not have the option to restart an activity in the middle (they have to continue until it is completed). This discourages students from constantly restarting an activity the moment they get something wrong.
If you click to "allow mid-activity restarts", students will have up to 3 restarts available per activity. In the image above, the restart button indicates that if the student were to restart the activity, this would be restart number 1 of 3 available.
ASSIGNMENT PREVIEW (TEACHERS)
TextActivities has an assignment preview mode. This is available from the "New assignment" popup, allowing you to go through the assignment before you set it. A "Skip activity" button allows you as the teacher to skip through all of the activities to see what they look like and to get a feel for what the experience will be like for students.
An assignment preview is also available for all assignments that you have set, including ones that have expired, via the teacher assignment options (above image) next to each assignment. So you can click this to remind yourself what the assignment looks like. You can also get a list of the activities included in an assignment by clicking on the green "info" link below the language flag for the resource. (In the above image it says "1 activity". If you click this it will tell you what the activity is and some info re. the parameters for that activity.)
DUE DATES / DELAYED STARTS
Assignments on TextActivities have a due date. Once you have set an assignment, you can edit the assignment due date using the edit button on the assignment teacher tools (see image in above section). Students will not be able to access an assignment once its due date has passed. (Due date also includes a time.)
You also have the option to set an assignment with a delayed start. By default (i.e. without setting a start time / date) the assignment is available immediately, but if you set a start date or time in the future, the assignment will not show for students until the date / time specified has arrived. (It shows as greyed out in the teacher view, so that you have the option to access the teacher tools shown in the above image.)
ASSIGNMENT AUDIENCE
TextActivities allows you to set assignments for a specific list of students, for a single student, for the whole class, or for one or more groups as defined in the "Manage groups" popup for your class.
If an assignment is set for a subset of your class students, only those students who are part of the intended audience will show in any data for that assignment.
Editing or resetting an assignment for students who didn't complete it before it expired is a great use for this feature.
ASSIGNMENT DATA
For each assignment, the teacher can access overall performance data, similar to that shown in the image above. For each student, the data shows: number and percentage of activities completed; accuracy of interactions; incorrect interactions; bought interactions (hints); time taken [total time including activity repeats in square brackets]; percentage score [total assessment mode percentage in square brackets].
The copy button at the top right allows you to copy this as comma-separated data for pasting into a spreadsheet / conversion into a spreadhseet file.
If you click on the green "Assignment steps" button, you can see detailed per-activity performance, including passmarks (and whether or not these were met) and extras provided (e.g. parallel text).
In the above image you can see that activities 1 and 2 had parallel text as support, and that activity 3 was set in assessment mode.
The above image shows multiple submissions by one student (students can attempt an assignment up to 3 times). Attempt 2 is open so that we can see the activity breakdown. We can also see activity repeats (including mid-activity restarts) for activities 2, 3 and 4.
If any of the assignment activities has a "% in play" set, this is also shown (column 4 in above image).
If a passmark is set for an activity, this is also shown in the breakdown (column 6 in above image), with a green tick to indicate that the student achieved the passmark (and a red cross to indicate that they didn't).
The gold star next to activity 2 (above image) indicates that this activity was set in "completion only" mode.
STUDENT DATA TAB
Teachers can also access all of the same data on a per student basis via the "Student data" tab (inside the "Data" tab in each class of which they are a teacher).
FROM THE STUDENT'S PERSPECTIVE?
Students see 2 tabs when they go to one of their classes: Assignments and Competitions. The above image shows the Assignments tab, with due assignments listed at the top and those that have been completed or have recently expired liisted below.
The green "redo" button (with the "redo" arrow) to the right of the completed assignment allows the student to redo the assignment if they wish. Each Assignment can be attempted up to 3 times.
Assignments which have been started but not yet finished (and which have not expired) are listed in the top section, but they show a "Resume" button rather than a "Start" button, and they also show some data regarding the % completion and the % score so far.
Hope you found this user guide useful :o)