When and When Not to Identify
Correct Answers and Assign Point
Values to Responses
Gerald Bergtrom, Ph.D.
Learning Technology Center
University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee
October 2005
Edited by Tanya Joosten, Alan Aycock, Susan Gifford
In this
•See strategies and methods for
tutorial identifying correct answers to your
you will: questions.
•Set the correct answer to a TurningPoint question and select a correct
response indicator.
•See strategies for giving points for
correct answers or just for class
participation
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With responses like this, you may
want to re-poll students, allowing
them to discuss their first choices To do this, click the repoll icon in the showbar.
before answering again!
The graph disappears
and polling re-opens.
For those times that you want to indicate the correct
response to a question, highlight it, right click your
mouse and select Set as Correct.
2
Then click Insert object, then Correct Answer Indicator,
and choice of indicator.
…and see this:
In points-based reports generated by TurningPoint,
correct answers are worth 100 points while wrong
answers get zero…
3
The arbitrary value of 100 points for a correct
answer seems… well, arbitrary! Logic would
dictate instead that you should award 1 point for a
correct answer and zero for incorrect answers.
Here’s how to assign points to correct responses…
To assign a point value of your choosing for the
correct answer, highlight it, right click your mouse
and select Set point value.
4
In the window that appears, type in a point value for the
highlighted answer; then click OK.
You are returned to this screen:
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When to Award Points
Awarding points for correct answers is useful for giving
low-stakes assessments (quizzes) e.g., when giving a
short quiz in class to assess a homework study
assignment, knowledge of the previous day’s subject
matter, or other homework assignment.
It is not useful if you want
•students to get instant feedback on what they learned
that day,
•to assess your own teaching efforts!
•get students to think (and talk!) about what you are
asking them.
Studies of student response systems tell us that best
pedagogic practice is to use clickers to encourage and
reward class participation rather than correct responses.
It is possible to award class participation
points in TurningPoint or in Excel reports
generated by TurningPoint.
In this example, an Excel report is generated by
TurningPoint and adjusted so that students will
get 10 points for trying to answer at least 80% of
your questions.
Appropriately assigned and weighted, these
points can be incorporated/imported directly into
your Excel or D2L gradebook.
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Here are the steps…
1. An ungraded Participant Results (Excel) report
is generated for each session, showing
student answers but not point values.
3. The session reports are combined to make a
single spreadsheet and aligned with Excel’s Vlookup or using the import/export function in
the D2L gradebook.
The spreadsheet might look like this:
responses to TP questions
Scroll to the right end of the spreadsheet…
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Type column headings
like the ones shown
here…
To enter the number of
responses of the first
student in this cell,
type the formula:
=count(F7.AI7)
To enter the % of
possible responses
in this cell, type
the formula:
=(AJ7/30)
To enter the points earned
by this student in this cell,
type the formula:
=IF(AK7>0.79,10,0)
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Next, copy the formulas in the circled cells to the
boxed cells; the data will re-calculate automatically.
You export the
Points Assigned
data and import
them into the
D2L gradebook.
Whether or not you choose to assign points for
responses, you will
1. need to generate the Excel reports using the
Turning Report function, and then
2. massage the numbers and format the
spreadsheet so that the data is compatible
with either your Excel or D2L gradebook.
Please contact the Learning Technology Center
if you would like help with these procedures.
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The end
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