Atomic Assessments - Overview
Atomic Assessments is an advanced quizzing tool currently available through Canvas to all of UW-Madison's for-credit instructors. Because it is an advanced quizzing tool, it is recommend for technically advanced instructors or instructors with departmental support staff. Please leave ample time to develop and test assessments in Atomic Assessments before incorporating them into your live courses.
This document provides some basic information about the centrally supported advanced quizzing tool Atomic Assessments, including tips on how to get started using the tool.
Select this link to list all Atomic Assessments documents from the Learn@UW-Madison Knowledgebase at the bottom of this page.
What is Atomic Assessments?
Atomic Assessments is an advanced quizzing tool that allows instructors to develop and deliver sophisticated quizzes directly in Canvas. Atomic Assessments is built on the Learnosity assessment platform, with key features including:
- Support for over 50 question types including drag and drop, interactive charts and graphs, mathematical text for question stems and answers, and audio student responses.
- Ability to add variables into questions, which increases the number of quiz variations.
- Advanced reporting that includes student responses, question evaluations, and more.
- The ability to create multi-part items that include multiple question types and that can be built on shared data.
- Robust tagging system that can be used to organize, randomly generate assessments and do outcome based reporting.
Most instructor’s quizzing needs can be met by using the Canvas Quizzes. Atomic Assessments provides more advanced quizzing functionality for instructors looking for deeper mathematical functionality, audio responses from students, more varied question types, and other advanced quizzing options. A comparison of the two tools is provided in Atomic Assessments - Is Atomic Assessments for me? . You can also request a consultation with the Learn@UW-Madison team by contacting the DoIT Help Desk if you would like more assistance in determining whether Atomic Assessments or Canvas Quizzes is right for you.
Getting Started
Following the steps outlined in the articles below will help you decide if Atomic Assessments is right for your course and how to move forward while effectively using the tool. Atomic assessments is available to all time-table courses, as well as in sandbox courses for tool exploration.
- Atomic Assessments - Is Atomic Assessments for me?
- Atomic Assessments - Enabling Atomic Assessments in Canvas
- Atomic Assessments - Creating Assignments in Canvas
- Atomic Assessments - Determining Assignment Settings
- Atomic Assessments - Grading Assignments
- Atomic Assessments - Reports and Downloading Student Responses
- Canvas - Student Tech Modules in Canvas Commons