Online Assessment Tool & Collaboration


Using Nearpod as a collaborative assessment tool.

Student assessments are part of life in the classroom. Teachers need to know what students know and can do to inform their teaching and ensure student learning. With that in mind, Nearpod.com is a fun, collaborative online assessment (and learning) tool that offers the ability to engage students in higher order thinking and not just yes/no responses.

Nearpod is flexible, which means it can be used as an individual assessment or collaboratively. As you create your assessment, teachers are able to select slides that assess in a variety of ways, including multiple-choice, matching, polling, open-ended questions, drawing and collaboration. Collaboration slides allow students to answer the question and then see other students’ answers on the white board or screen. This is a great way for students to see how their peers think and respond. It also provides the means for students to increase their own understanding based on peer responses. Nearpod assessments could be also be completed in small groups, offering a different type of collaboration. Depending on what type of information the instructor is seeking, Nearpod can be designed to work within many forms of assessment.

When using Nearpod, student responses are submitted for the instructor to view. Teachers are able to quickly assess what a student knows or is thinking when using Nearpod, especially with the open-ended question option. This question-type encourages students to put thinking into their own words instead of simply selecting the answer from a list of options. Again, higher-order thinking in a quick formative assessment tool is a wonderful feature of Nearpod.

I did not find an option for instructor feedback between teacher and student, which would be a helpful feature given the importance of constructive feedback.

The assessment I created is designed for a 3rd grade science unit on weather. My Nearpod assessment includes open-ended questions, drawing, collaboration and a poll. This lesson could be done individually by students or in small-groups depending on the goal of the assessment.

Click (or copy and paste) the link to view my lesson.
Enter code: FCJMQ (if prompted)

Click here to check out Nearpod (the free version offers a lot of options, but there is a premium option as well).

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