Don’t Break the Bank: Being Creative and Utilizing FREE

Resources to Enhance Your Assessment Practices

Karen Price & Sandra Nicks Belmont Abbey College

 Presented May 25, 2010 at the

Sixth Annual NCICU Assessment Conference Raleigh, NC

Why should we be interested in online assessment tools?

• Increasing need to collect and use data for accountability

• Many programs competing for limited resources• Lower cost relative to other data collection

methods• Ease of Use• Did I mention.....Many FREE resources available!

Online Assessment Tools

• Survey Tools• Test, Quiz & Assignment Tools• Statistical Software Programs• Collaboration Tools• Document Preparation and Management

Online Survey Tools

Survey Gizmo (http://www.surveygizmo.com/)Free Version• unlimited surveys• unlimited questions• multi-page• download data to Excel• built-in reporting•  250 responses per month

Did you know?• Enrolled students are provided free upgrade to

Enterprise level with student accounts!   

Online Survey Tool in                                                     (http://docs.google.com)

• must have Gmail account to use Google docs(free to open gmail account)

• In Documents, Create a "Form"• Several question formats• Imports data directly to Excel spreadsheet• Email a web-based link to respondents

Free Collaboration Tools

 Zoho Chat (www.zoho.com)  Mikigo (http://www.mikogo.com/)  Vyew  (http://vyew.com/site/)  Google Chat (www.google.com/talk/) Oovoo (http://www.oovoo.com/)• Share a video conference and your desktop with up to

six parties 

Free Statistical Analysis ToolsPSPP- Free Replacement for SPSShttp://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/ • Supports over 1 billion cases. • Supports over 1 billion variables. • Syntax and data files are compatible with SPSS. • Choice of terminal or graphical user interface. • Choice of text, postscript or html output formats. • Easy data import from spreadsheets, text files and database

sources. • Fast statistical procedures, even on very large data sets. • No license fees. • No expiration period. • No unethical “end user license agreements”.

Another Open Source Statistics Tool

Statistics Open For All-- SOFAhttp://www.sofastatistics.com/home.php • Spreadsheet Friendly• Import Data; even connects to SQL databases• HTML output available to place on website• Attractive, easy to read graphing• Main Statistical Procedures/Tests

o Row and column percentages, with the ability to nest variables o Descriptives such as Mean, Median, Standard Deviation o Pearson's Chi-Square with Contingency Tables o Independent samples t-test & Paired samples t-test o One-way ANOVA o Nonparametic Tests (Mann Whitney U,Wilcoxon Signed Ranks, Kruskal Wallis H) o Pearson's Correlation and Spearman's Correlation

Portfolio Software

Sakaihttp://sakaiproject.org/Open Source System for Collaboration, Course Management, Portfolio Development, and more• Design, publish, share and view portfolios of work • Wizards & Matrices: Create structures to help site participants

document and reflect upon their learning and development• Evaluations: Provide site participants with summative feedback on

submissions to wizards and matrices• Reports: Build, view and export reports on portfolio-related site

activity• Layouts & Styles: Manage pre-defined Styles used to control the

visual style (fonts, colors, etc.) • Portfolio Templates: Manage templates site participants use to

create standardized portfolios

Ok, so not FREE, but LOW COSTProProfs Quiz Makerhttp://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/tour.php For Educational Users, Only $36 per year or $5 per month no contractUnlimited quizzes • Create an unlimited number of quizzes, store all users’ quiz answers, and analyze and

track results. Unlimited number of questions.Unlimited quiz takers • No limit to the number of people who can take a quiz

Track who took your quiz • Track quiz takers' names, email, ID, IP address, and any custom fields.

Store, view & download quiz results • Keep an on online record, or download information, on who took the quiz, their score

and their answers to each question.Quiz Analytics to understand quiz takers • Analyze question difficulty, time taken, quiz popularity, location of quiz takers and

more.No advertisements

Other Free Resources

Anti-Viral Software•  Avira AntiVir Personal (http://free-av.com)

o Basic protectiono Free tools

Avira AntiVir Removal Tool Avira AntiRootkit Tool Avira Boot Sector Repair Tool Avira UnErase Personal Avira NTFS4DOS Personal Avira AntiVir Rescue System

Other Free Resources (cont.)

Screen Capturing •  Jing (http://www.jingproject.com/)

o capture a picture of computer screeno record video of onscreen actiono instantly share over the web, IM, email

 •  CamStudio (http://camstudio.org/)

o record all screen and audio activity on the computer and create industry-standard AVI video files

Other Free Resources (Google)

Document Preparation & Management• Google Docs (http://docs.google.com)

o Create and share your online documents, presentations and spreadsheets  

Websites• Google Sites (http://sites.google.com)

o Create websites and secure group wikis • Google Places (https://www.google.com/places)

o Create business websites Photo Editing• Picasa (http://picasa.google.com)

 

Other Cool Free StuffEver NoteDon't forget the Mill