Creating Classroom and School-Wide Assessments with Galileo Technology

Galileo includes multiple easy-to-use assessment-creation interfaces designed for the classroom teacher including Test Builder including Item Builder technology and Dialog Builder. Galileo Automated Scoring Key (ASK) technology also supports the importation of existing tests for administration, scoring, and reporting within Galileo. This blog will focus on Test Builder with Item Builder and Dialog Builder.

Test Builder with included Item Builder

The Test Builder and Dialog Builder interfaces provide teachers and staff with the ability to quickly and easily create their own tests from the ATI Community Item Banks, optional Inspect and Navigate Item Banks, and district-created item banks with district-created items.

The ATI Test Builder interface makes it easy to create formative assessments containing engaging technology-enhanced (TE) items. For teachers creating an assessment, they select the standards of interest, automatically search the item banks, and pick favorite questions. The next step is to publish the assessment for online and/or offline administration. Teachers can quickly duplicate and edit assessments. Teachers can also place assessment and item content in shared libraries supporting the sharing of content with other teachers and schools within the district.

The Test Builder interface is designed for flexible use with desktops, laptops, or tablets. With the numerous capabilities the Galileo Test Builder offers, teachers are finding test creation easier than ever. These capabilities include:

• Search Item Banks by standard or item family

• Refine searches by item type and depth of knowledge (DOK)

• Quickly add, reorder, and/or delete items

• Create your own items using the included intuitive Item Builder tools 

• Multiple-Choice

• Extended Multiple-Choice

• True/False

• Yes/No

• Open Response with scoring rules

• Short Answer

• Selectable Text (correct/incorrect hot spots)

• Classification (drag and drop of words/images into boxes)

• Labeling (drag and drop of labels on an image)

• View a summary of your current test items at the same time as your current search results

• Access online student and teacher previews of your test

• Access quick links to schedule the test and print if needed for offline student test booklets, once your test is published

Galileo  Test Builder Interface

 

The Galileo Test Builder interface includes state-of-the-art Item Builder tools. This makes it possible to create items and to align these items to state standards in any grade and subject. Assessment items may be accompanied by images, text, and links to a variety of media (e.g., videos, images, texts, attached files) and associated with metadata (e.g. DOK). Creation tools for multiple item types are currently available in the classic Test Builder interface. 

Creating a TE item with the Item Builder tools in Test Builder  

Dialog Builder

Using Dialog Builder, teachers can build online Instructional Dialog lessons and assignments integrating instruction with classroom assessments and providing related instructional activities (including those available through Galileo), and practice items. Dialogs make it possible to assess what is learned and guide learning by providing immediate feedback during the learning process. Online content may include multimedia content such as images, video presentations, and sound.

Galileo Dialog Builder Interface

For further information on how to create Galileo formative (classroom and school-wide) assessments, contact your Field Services Coordinator or access the Help Files via the Galileo application. Check out the Learning on Demand library of training webinars in the Galileo Help Files: 

• Galileo’s Test Builder: Creating Multiple Choice, Extended Multiple Choice, and Short Answer Items

• Galileo’s Test Builder: Creating Open Response and Essay Item Types

The New Galileo K-12 Student-Parent Center

The Galileo K-12 Student-Parent Center's updated platform provides users many new features. These include:

• user-friendly icons and graphical representations,
• responsive design to accommodate the use of the center on various screen sizes, such as laptops, tablets and desk tops,
• the integration of Google Translate enabling families whose primary language is not English to use the center efficiently, and
• a convenient option to choose when to implement the new interface. 

Districts and charter schools have the option to switch now to the new interface or to continue using the classic interface accompanied with a preview of the new interface. ATI encourages districts to explore the new Galileo K-12 Student-Parent Center and create a plan to implement and train staff and students on how to utilize the new platform. To assist in this, districts can setup a preview of the new platform and access the preview with a student username and password. 

Once the preview is activated all students will be able to access the new platform from the classic Galileo K-12 Student-Parent Center. During this preview phase, ATI encourages you to have teachers schedule formative assessments, and Dialogs. Teachers should instruct students to access the formative assessments and Dialogs from the new interface. This will provide students and teachers the opportunity to experience the new platform in a casual environment, rather than having the first experience during district-wide testing. 

Contact the Professional Development Department at ProfessionalDevelopment@ati-obline.com to learn more about transitioning to the new Galileo K-12 Student-Parent Center interface.

The Galileo K-12 Student-Parent Center Makes Access to Information Quick and Easy

The new Galileo K-12 Student-Parent Center helps to manage communications between teachers and students as well as between teachers and parents. The Center is designed to increase student engagement in the learning process in part by communicating to the student pertinent information concerning scheduled lessons, assignments, assessments, and assessment results. The page has also been designed to communicate important information to parents including information on student learning, curriculum, and instructional resources for home use. The interfaces for students and parents are intuitive in nature and provide easy-to-follow navigational icons. The student and parent functions are made concise through three main features:

• Dashboard 
• Calendar 
• Dialog Notes

The Dashboard provides students and parents easy access to scheduled activities and assessment results. Students have direct access to scheduled online tests as well as to assignments and lessons administered in Instructional Dialogs. Students and parents also have access to instructional resources and assessment results presented in easy to interpret charts, graphs, and lists. In the case of secure online assessments such as District benchmark tests, a teacher-issued password is issued in order to control student access and to maintain the security of the assessment content.  

From the K-12 Student-Parent Center Dashboard, students and parents may view data that indicates how the student is performing on assessments. The data are presented graphically as shown above and also in list form for easy viewing. Click to view larger.

The K-12 Student-Parent Center Calendar organizes content in a way that gives a view of instruction and assessment over time. The Calendar can be viewed by month, week, or day. Like the Dashboard, the Calendar provides access to scheduled assessments, classroom quizzes, online instructional dialogic lessons, assignments, and instructional resources. The student can see at a glance their scheduled activities including due dates. 

The K-12 Student-Parent Center Calendar provides students a quick view of and access to all scheduled assessments and assignments. Click to view larger.

From the Dialog Notes feature, students can review notes that they have made while participating in an online Dialog lesson or assignment. Dialog notes provide detailed information about the student’s progress through an online lesson or assignment as well as direct access to the Dialogs containing notes.

To learn more about the Center please contact a friendly Field Services Coordinator. 

Digital Curriculum Platform Designed for 21st Century K–12 Classrooms

The Galileo Digital Curriculum Platform by ATI supports rapid dynamic curriculum development integrating instruction with assessment to promote learning. Galileo digital curriculums may include multimedia content, technology-enhanced assessments, and tools supporting online synchronous and asynchronous communication between students and teachers. A Galileo digital curriculum consists of two major components: a series of online Instructional Units defining the scope and sequence of instruction and offering a variety of resources to guide instruction, and within each Unit a series of online Instructional Dialogs enabling the online delivery of assessment and instruction. A series of Units can form the complete curriculum for a particular subject and grade.

To learn more about ATI’s Digital Curriculum Platform features and benefits, contact us today.

The new Digital Curriculum Explorer widget on the Teaching Dashboard provides convenient access to digital curriculums containing Units and Dialogs.

The Application of Learning

“Tell me and I forget.  Teach me and I remember. 

Involve me and I learn.” 

- Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was a man ahead of his time in many ways, including education. The importance of applying learning that he speaks in the oft-cited quote above is one of the key themes of the Common Core. The Common Core asks not only have students mastered certain skills, but also if they can they apply them. Have they reached higher depth of knowledge? Can they think critically about information that is available and decide on a course of action? This emphasis has lead to recognition that assessments should become broader, more rigorous, and more relevant. Towards that end, new assessment items types have been developed that provide different types of tasks for students to complete. There has also been an increase in the use of project-based assessment requiring students to complete an involved piece of work with many steps. 

New types of items provide students with new novel and engaging tasks. Students might be asked to actually identify specific passages from a text that support a particular statement. They might be asked to sort items by a principle such as common cellular structure. These sorts of items make for an engaging and relevant evaluation of the skill being assessed. In May ATI released a series of short formative assessments showcasing several of these new types of Technology Enhanced Items. The assessments provided an opportunity to expose students to the types of tasks required by these items and to gain familiarity with what will be required of them when they take on the new state tests.

Shortly ATI will be releasing Dialogs containing these assessment items. Dialogs are instructional tools that provide teachers with the capability to link instructional content with assessment items.  The environment provided within dialogs allows districts to build project-based instruction and assessments that will afford districts the opportunity to provide students with rich instructional content that produces relevant assessment data about student learning. 

This fall ATI will be releasing units containing descriptions of some of the new item types and their use. Included in the units will be sample dialogs that can be readily edited to provide students with a chance to experience how the items work and the tasks that they require. They will also include sample performance-based assessments. We look forward to receiving feedback on their use.

John R. Bergan, Ph.D.
Vice President Research and Development

Online Curriculum Development – New this fall

ATI Instructional Dialogs are comprised of a series of instructional communications among students and their teacher intended to promote student mastery of educational standards. They can include lessons or assignments that may be delivered online or offline. Dialogs provide many benefits that can improve the quality of instruction and reduce the cost and effort required to implement instruction:

• Dialogs can be linked to Instructional Units providing a framework for the rapid development, deployment, and modification of curriculum. Online Instructional Dialogs integrate assessment and instruction. Thus, a Dialog may include a lesson, discussion of the lesson, and assessments of the mastery of lesson objectives interspersed throughout the Dialog. Integration makes it possible to provide immediate feedback during the instructional process, which has been shown in research studies to improve learning.  
• Dialogs make it possible to offer instruction simultaneously in multiple classes in different locations supporting rapid and flexible dissemination of instruction. 
• Dialogs provide a record of what has been taught and what has been learned. Accordingly, they can be used to assess the effectiveness of Instructional Units, making it possible to improve curriculum continuously.  
• Dialogs make it possible to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of different forms of differentiated instruction.   
• Formative assessments implemented in Dialogs support the introduction of Technology Enhanced (TE) items in an instructional environment that can promote the development of test-taking skills associated with TE item types and the mastery of valued standards targeted for instruction in district curriculum.

To learn more about online curriculum development, contact your Field Services Coordinator.