Create answer templates for calculation assessments to standardize student’s submissions so it is easier to mark. Math can be done several different ways and still arrive in the same answer. With Excel templates, it narrows down the options students have so you spend less time figuring out what they did. It saves time for students as they do not have to create a format from scratch.
Transcript – Answer Templates for Calculation Assessments (click to open)
Hi, my name’s Andrew Seto and I teach income taxation at The Business School. So what I want to talk about is with calculation type questions and assessments. It can be kind of tedious to mark. So what I come up, came out with, in terms of trying to make marking these assessments a lot more time efficient, I came up with this answer sheet template. And I think it’s a really good way to streamline the solutions that students offer so that it’s a lot easier to understand where the students are coming from because all their answers are in a uniformed structure. And of course you could use publishers resources as well. However, I find for my courses, their resources aren’t customizable as I well as, well as, I would like. So I came up with a strategy just to make it a little bit more easier for the students in terms of giving them more well-suited questions. And, of course, with math you can do things, calculations, several different ways to get the same answer. So my template is there just to make things easier especially on the marking side of things. So for me, tax, I do have this item column, the amounts that’s there, and for the students to type in supporting calculations. So, typically, I have them do salary and they could have an amount in there, that’s fine, and calculations could be, hey, they work two jobs, so I’m just going to type in things in here. And these are all sort of pre-populated and formatted excel cells. So these are text based so no matter what numbers they put in that’s not going to change into a number format. And to explain a little bit about the sheet itself, so obviously first name, last name and student numbers there. The blue is color coded, or color coordinated, sorry, to be a little bit more indicating where you shouldn’t be putting answers in or any kind of solutions into. And because it’s excel, I didn’t lock it. I could lock this form so that they would only, they would only be able to put things into these blank white cells here but I find that kind of restricts sort of the formula functions and things like that. So with this method, they definitely can do their auto sum. They can do their underlines, just to say, hey, this is a break in the calculation. things like that. And I said, most students are familiar with excel. So it’s a really great tool for something that they already know how to do. Another approach to this template actually is, you can actually list off your items on the side here, which could be seen as sort of hand holding them to the answer. However, you could leave the numbers blank. And in my core subjects, there are some things that are equal, uou do not include so it would be zero or they could put nil and, you know, it would still have almost the same effect in testing their knowledge in the subject. Scrolling down, I did actually add a student comment box just in case there’s any IT issues, internet issues that came up, especially if I’m using this template in a midterm test or final exam. If their internet cuts out and, for whatever reasons, things don’t save, they can, you know, make a comment in here saying, your internet’s been very wonky, they had a power outage, what have you, so that they don’t have to send you an email and you have to read another thing and, you know, taking up more of your time. So yeah, an answer template. I think it’s a very nice way to sort of streamline the solutions that you are marking and just knock it off one by one. Because as much as marking my paper was a lot simpler and sounds like definitely with online learning, these answer templates for calculation purposes especially, seems to be very, very worthwhile. That’s my tip on assessments with the answer templates. Hope you enjoyed it.
About Andrew Seto
CPA, CMA teaching Income Taxation at The Business School