A Student S Guide to EDU Assessments in The

Student Assessment Guide (to the EDU Assessments of the Nebraska Astronomy Applet Project)

Each NAAP applet and instructional materials are sandwiched between a pre-test and post- test. By comparing the post-test and pre-test scores for a large number of students, we can judge how effective NAAP materials are at teaching astronomy. You may either take assessments in the shared NAAP account or in your instructor’s personal account. Each instructor’s account has access to the same NAAP assessments plus their own unique electronic gradebook to record student scores. All NAAP assessments are randomized – meaning that each student will get a slightly different, but very comparable version. These assessments are given in EDU – a web-based assessment engine marketed by Brownstone Learning. This document spells out everything students need to know to take advantage of these capabilities.

The First Time You Use EDU

The first time you use EDU (and only the first time) you need to create a user account in the system. This tells EDU who you are and how to list your scores in the instructor gradebook.

You will either go to the public NAAP EDU account at Throughout the NAAP site http://calculus.unl.edu/edu/classes/astro you will be presented with boxes like this to enter your or your instructor’s private NAAP EDU account at Instructor’s Account Name. http://calculus.unl.edu/edu/classes/astroXXXXXXXXX where XXXXXXXXX represents your Instructor’s Account Name -- a unique URL suffix which is typically part of your instructor’s name and your school. Your instructor will provide this information to you.

Then click on Register for this class. You will be presented with a menu system where you specify your name, Login name, password, Student ID#, and Email address. You should write down your Login name and password. The Email address is important because if you ever forget your password you can have EDU send it to you in an Email message. Remember that you only need to do this the first time you use EDU to specify a Login name and password.

The View Past Results is useful for checking your scores on previous assessments. If you are ever in doubt about whether you have taken an assignment, you can check here to make sure it was recorded From Then On Links are provided on the NAAP pages to the assessments. You simply need to click on a link to the shared NAAP account or specify your instructor’s account name.

It’s really very simple since all of the links in NAAP are preprogrammed to take you directly to the correct assessment in your instructor’s EDU account. You will then be asked for your Login Name and password before beginning the assessment.

Survival Tips in EDU o Always use the BACK and NEXT buttons in EDU to move between pages of an assignment. You don’t want to use your browser’s back and forward buttons once you have begun an EDU assignment. o Make sure you click GRADE when finished. This corrects your assessment and places a score in your instructor’s electronic gradebook. If you have accidentally left any questions blank, EDU will ask you to answer them before grading. o All NAAP assessments have time limits. It is a very generous limit – typically 30 minutes – but you will be logged out if you haven’t graded your assignment by then. EDU also has logouts for inactivity – typically 15 minutes.