Kids Discover, a provider of engaging science and social studies curriculum, announced that its interactive digital library, Kids Discover Online, now includes custom assessment capabilities. Kids Discover Online enables educators to mix and match material from science and social studies to facilitate students’ exploration of big ideas through cross-curricular learning. The newly added Assessments tool gives educators full control to create, distribute, and assess custom quizzes, tests, and homework assignments directly within the platform.
The Assessments feature includes more than 5,000 pre-built questions covering more than 1,200 science and social studies topics. Question types vary to include discussion prompts, short answer, multiple choice, and true/false. Educators can save content to their Classroom and have questions specifically corresponding to a given article automatically populate the question bank.
“It is so important that our users know we listen to their feedback and requests. They are our best source of information on how to continue making our solution the absolute best for them and their students,” said Ted Levine, the president and CEO of Kids Discover. “With pre-built questions, customization features, automated grading, and Gradebook tracking, teachers will now be able to use our science and social studies content to accurately assess their students’ knowledge and understanding within those subjects.”
Using the question bank as a starting point, educators can create custom assessments ranging from short multiple-choice quizzes to longer mixed-question assessments. The tool was created to be as flexible as possible, giving educators the freedom to edit existing questions or create their own. With Assessments, educators can lock and unlock content during assessments to restrict what the student can view while the assessment is in process. This feature can also be used to differentiate homework assignments from exams.
Levine added, “Many of our users use Kids Discover Online daily, and know our content and interface inside out. They’re the experts, and to ensure we are making our product the best it can be, we often engage in phone conversations and emails with our educators to collect detailed, qualitative feedback on what we can do to make our tool even better. The Assessments feature was in high demand, so we built it.”
Teachers can save hours of time spent on grading by creating custom answer keys. Kids Discover will automatically grade all true/false and multiple-choice questions, giving teachers more time to focus on their students. In cases where connectivity is not readily available, teachers can print and distribute custom assessments to students as well.
The Gradebook feature enables educators to view and analyze students’ history on all past assessments within Kids Discover Online, including offline tests manually entered by educators. Gradebook automatically monitors students’ progress throughout the year and provides educators an analysis of where their strengths lie and where they need additional support. Students also have the ability to look at their own past performance or drill into a specific assessment to see which questions they got right or wrong.
As they can with all Kids Discover Online content, students will be able to take assessments on any device, including iPads, laptops, and even mobile phones. The Assessments tool is only for use by those with Kids Discover Online paid accounts.
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