The appraisal form – Ans

An appraisal form is an assignment type within Ans and can be used to assess students on their work. This assignment type is often used to assess students at the same time as when they are performing the assessment. The appraisal form is often used for practical assignments, such as oral presentations. The appraisal form can be used, for example, to check off steps that a student should complete or mention during the assessment.

The main difference between an appraisal form and other assignment types, is the starting moment of the assignment. For other assignment types, such as the digital test, the student needs to take the assignment by answering the questions. For the appraisal form, the reviewer is in charge of the starting moment, as the reviewer chooses for which student a review needs to be done. This makes the appraisal form helpful for practical assignments, as the order in which the students perform the assessment might not be clear upfront. For taking this assignment type, students do not need to sign in to Ans because they are not active in the platform during the assessment.

In this article, more information on how to create an appraisal form including adding questions and exercises is given, as well as how to review students.

Create an appraisal form

To create an appraisal form, follow the steps below.

Click the domain School name in the menu on the left.
Click on label_importantCourses in the menu at the top.
Click on your course or use the search bar.
Click on New assignment.
Fill in the name of your assignment.
Select Appraisal form and click Create.

Add exercises and questions to the appraisal form

As with all assignment types, the basis of an appraisal form are exercises that contain questions. First, an exercise must be created. Follow the steps below to create an exercise.

Click on your assignment or use the search bar.
Click New exercise
Fill in the name of the exercise and click Save

After adding an exercise, you will see the following screen:

If you have been using other assignment types before, such as the digital test, a few differences can be noticed:

The tabs 'Grading scheme' and 'Objectives' are the only tabs showing. In this assignment type, a question and optionally, a model answer, is created in the tab 'Grading scheme'. It is also not possible to add flow and exercise groups.
Within an exercise, it is only possible to add questions. No descriptions can be added. Descriptions are not relevant for this assignment type, as students will not be active in the platform during the assessment.
The preview of the assignment will not be generated, hence why the screen on the right is black.

Now it is possible to add questions to the exercise by clicking New question. For the appraisal form, there are only two question types available. The two question types are:

Open question

lightbulb_outline Please note that the open question used in the appraisal form is different from the open question used in the digital test or the written assignment.

In the appraisal form, no points can be added to the open question. The open question in the appraisal form is mainly used as a possibility for reviewers to make notes during the reviewing process.

Evaluation form

The evaluation question is the question type that is used to review students by awarding the students points and by giving them feedback on their assessment. After selecting the evaluation form, you can select the grading type, fill in the maximum number of points, formulate the question and optionally, a model answer.

Another difference between the appraisal form and other assignment types is that exercises are not separated during the reviewing process. All questions and exercises are shown below each other in one overview. The reason for this is to prevent additional clicks to switch to another interface while the live assessment of a student is ongoing. In the example below, you can see an example of an evaluation form with a grading scheme, combined with an open question.

Start reviewing the appraisal form

In order to start assessing the students with the use of the appraisal form, you will first need to add learners to your course. More information about adding learners to your course can be found here. Once learners have been added to the course, you can start reviewing. To do this, click mark_chat_read Review in the menu at the top and click on New review in the top right corner. An overview of all learners in the course appears from which you can select the learner you are going to assess.

After you have selected the learner, the review page appears. As explained before, all exercises and questions appear below each other and you can start reviewing as usual. In the review menu in the top right corner, you will see the four options 'Review', 'Annotations', 'Discussion' and 'Flags'. For the appraisal form, the annotations button has no function. The other options are explained in the start reviewing article.

All changes made to the evaluation form are saved automatically. To save the content of an open question, press the Save button.

lightbulb_outline Please note that the appraisal form is for individual assessments only. It is not possible to create an appraisal form for a group or a class.

lightbulb_outline It is possible to add a timeslot to the appraisal form, similar to adding a timeslot to the other assignment types. However, the timeslot for the appraisal form will not result in making the assignment available for the selected students' group during the specific time. The assignment will always and only be open to the reviewers.

Other options of the appraisal form

The appraisal form also has other options similar to the other assignment types. For example, you can set the mark calculation or publish the results.

Related articles