The Assignment tool in FLO is a great tool for receiving electronically created assessment items online. There are also a range of other tools in FLO that can help you to create authentic and creative online assessment tasks for individual students or students working in groups.

Assignment
The Assignment tool enables students to submit a range of documents, media or video as individuals or as group assignments.

• Feedback to students: there are options to provide feedback using comments, feedback through templates, or spoken audio feedback.
• Marking and grading: the Assignment tool includes options to use online marking guides (e.g. rubrics), audio feedback and marks that flow through to the gradebook.
• Extensions can be granted through the Assignment grading screen or by request from the student in the Assignment extension tool.

For more information on the Assignment tool please visit the FLO staff support site.

Other FLO tool options for assessment
The FLO tools listed below can be used to support students to create and share online content in FLO.  These tools can be used individually or in groups and for both formative and summative assessment.  There are also options to provide feedback and grades to students through most of these tools.

Blog
Students make regular contributions to blog (web) pages. They can work with individual or group blogs to contribute text, videos, images and comments.

• Feedback to students: comments can be provided in response to individual or group contributions.
• Marking and grading: you can view participation by user and a grade for the blog can be set up in the Gradebook.

For more information on the Blog tool please visit the FLO staff support site.

Forum
Asynchronous discussion that students participate in can be counted towards their assessment.

• Feedback to students: Feedback can be provided by students and staff as replies. Forum post ratings can also be used.
• Marking and grading: Students can be assessed on their individual and group forum contributions. Try using FLO activity reports such as topic participation or participants report to help with discourse analysis and tracking.  If forum post ratings are used, FLO gradebook can automatically calculate the grade based on ratings.

For more information on using Forums please visit the FLO staff support site.

Quizzes
In addition to multiple choice assessed quizzes, you can also use quizzes to allow time-limited writing for longer responses (quiz essay question), or in some circumstances use a quiz to facilitate an exam.

• Feedback to students: Can be automated as part of quiz completion or you can provide individualised feedback to quiz question responses.
• Marking and grading: private between the teacher and student, can be automated or have question by question or overall manual comments/feedback.

For more information on Quizzes please visit the FLO staff support site.

Wiki
A wiki enables students to construct a collaboratively authored web-page resource by writing, editing and presenting text and media individually or in groups.

• Feedback to students: Teaching staff can comment on wiki pages and review participation by looking at the logged history of wiki editing to see how each student contributed to the resource.
• Marking and grading: Students could be assessed based on their original contributions, participation in editing or as a group based on the overall resource.

For more information on the Wiki tool please visit the FLO staff support site.

Database
Students can collaborate to build a collection of links, text entries and media with opportunities to comment and review entries.

• Feedback to students: Can be provided through comments and ratings on entries.
• Marking and grading: Teaching staff can see which students have authored entries in the database.

For more information on the Database tool please visit the FLO staff support site.

Suggestions for using FLO tools for assessment
One assessment activity could consist of many smaller diverse yet related online learning activities that use a variety of tools in FLO.

For instance, the assessment task could begin with an orientation session in Collaborate, followed by a student co-created resource collection in Database, followed by a draft submission for peer comment or rating in Forum, followed by individual formal submission in Assignment, concluding with a reflection on the task in Collaborate.

If you also want to grade a series of activities, you can set up the FLO gradebook for each online activity, and then organise related assessed activities into gradebook categories.  With this approach you can also think about creating opportunities to allow students some flexibility in choosing certain activities from a selection of smaller online learning activities, and having the gradebook calculate their best results.

The tools mentioned here are not the only options for assessment in FLO.  For more ideas, keep an eye on the online teaching – tips and support web page or speak to your friendly eLearning (FLO) support team.