Online testing, assignments, and assessments are important tools for teachers to use with their students that take advantage of the technology students are using everyday. It promotes continued learning outside the classroom, and keeps students accountable for their progress. It allows teachers to monitor this progress from anywhere as students complete their online assignments. There are challenges that arise however, when students are tasked on their own to complete work like this. The Time on Task report is a way to help solve these issues.
The Time on Task Report is a key way for teachers to observe their students’ productivity as they complete assignments online, even though they can’t physically be keeping an eye on them. The report does more than simply check the time it took for students to complete a question, which doesn’t account for time spent pausing to get a drink of water, or taking time to research answers online. Instead, the report tracks how long a student is active within a question so teachers can monitor why students may be taking more time on it and whether the time spent affects their overall accuracy.
This reporting is the best estimation of how much time is being spent on a task and how the student is performing. Based on the success of the student on each question, and the rate at which they are answered, teachers can determine if they should receive credit or not. They can see if the appropriate amount of time was put into it to come up with the response they filled in. No longer does the teacher have to guess whether the student was texting a friend instead of focusing as the report monitors question views along with active and idle time.
The Time on Task Report will help teachers gain a clearer perspective of how their students are performing, and make online testing, assignments and assessments even more valuable to the education process.