[ARCHIVED] Creating Assessments in Chem for students to show work

[lisa_wathen]

I am working to support chemistry teachers who need to put their assessments on Canvas and align them to Outcomes.  Their unit tests involve mostly multiple choice, but several of the questions require students to show their work. The teachers are building question banks aligned to outcomes but are struggling with how to create questions that require students to show their work specifically with unit tests for nuclear chemistry, acids and bases, gas laws, etc.  Does anyone have solutions that are reasonable? quizzes for chemistry make canvas better for math high school science

[nwilson7 · Accepted solution]

 @lisa_wathen ‌, not sure any of these are perfect solutions but here are a few things I have seen instructors do for situations like these.  

First, it looks like you are from Wisconsin and I am not sure the requirements there but since having to type out how one came to a certain answer is part of the state required tests in Indiana (where I am) we took this opportunity to have manually graded essay responses.  This does take extra time but in the long run gives students the opportunity to practice typing out answers and how they got to that answer which many complained they have never had to do prior to the state test.  You could potentially make this two separate questions, one numerical and one essay with the work so Canvas can grade the numerical answer.  

We also have instructors that the student has to use a drawing program or something like powerpoint (or in many cases our departments have programs to build chemical elements and diagrams) and then they screenshot that and submit a picture as the answer.  Again this takes manually grading but does give the option for more complex answers.

The last thing I have seen is a normal exam and then a piece of paper is turned in (or photo of the paper normally) with all the work behind the questions.  Canvas grades the actual exam and then the instructor can look over the work.  

Again, none of these are perfect but seem to work pretty well.

-Nick

[lisa_wathen]

Thank you so much,  @nwilson7 !  These suggestions are so helpful.  Grateful for your assistance and giving me workable solutions to bring back to my colleagues!

Lisa