There are many reasons to love Gizmos STEM Cases. Allowing students to step into the roles of STEM professionals is just the beginning. Continuously upgrading the design to make them even more revolutionary is another. Enhancing the heatmap is our newest change.
Enhancing the heatmap as a conversational tool
The STEM Cases heatmap is a great tool for assessing students' current progress and thinking. Educators can view and sort the heatmap by practices and skills. Students collect, analyze, and interpret data, while teachers monitor understanding using real-time data insights and heatmaps based on built-in assessment questions.
STEM Case heatmaps can now include a “conversational” question type. Conversational questions are strategically designed questions embedded throughout the lesson to engage students in critical thinking and reflection. They reflect the types of questions that educators use to help students connect new information to prior knowledge and have meaningful conversations during class.
Continue the conversation in class!
The current experience
Currently, teachers use the "teacher-graded" question functionality for these types of conversational questions. Student responses to questions can be very insightful to the learning process without needing points. But zero points are shown in red. With some additional work, the teacher can assign “free points” and grade the responses.
Upgrading the experience for better teacher insights
STEM Cases get better with every evolution! The upgraded heatmap experience opens up more opportunities to monitor student progress effectively and efficiently.
What’s new?
- No teacher input is required.
- Teachers can view student responses and take no further actions.
- The rubric explains that the conversational question is ungraded.
- A new lightbulb icon alerts teachers to conversational questions.
- The heatmap cell is PURPLE, removing any connotations of good and bad.
What about the other questions? They’re treated just as they were before. The new conversational questions don’t affect any point totals.
STEM Cases keep getting better! Are you ready to try them with your students? Start a free Gizmos trial today!
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