Kognity's Performance Task is a student assessment tool that aligns with national science standards and evaluates 3-dimensional learning — helping to track student progress with accuracy, saving teachers time when it comes to grading 3-dimensional learning. These performance tasks model the assessments states are using for their science tests, and by giving students a chance to practice this type of assessment, students are set up for success in the spring.
Each performance task comes with mapped science standards, teacher-guided instructions, options for teacher-to-student feedback, classroom performance insights, and easy grading capabilities, all in one platform.
Expected Performance Task Workflow
The teacher assigns the PT content option to students for a particular lesson.
In the classroom, students will open the book assignment which brings them to the PT content option (or simply navigate to the PT content option).
The teacher provides appropriate oral instruction in the classroom or written instructions in the assignment and can start the task.
Students complete individually and submit their work before the in-classroom time runs out; teachers control the timing.
There two ways to navigate to the grading view:
a) Once students submit all of their answers, the teacher sees at the top of the PT page how many student answers they have left to grade and can navigate to a grading view for the PT from there.
Image 1: Nothing to grade
Image 2: 8 responses to gradeb) You can also navigate to the Performance Task grading interface from the book assignment overview page. Click on the assignment from the assignments overview page to navigate to the book assignment overview.
A notification will display if a Performance Task in a book assignment has ungraded student responses, and clicking it will open the grading interface.
The teacher grades the submissions.
After the submissions are graded, teachers can send the grades and feedback to students. If an adjustment is needed, teachers can edit/update grades and feedback to re-send to students.
Lastly, a heatmap will be displayed for the teachers as an overview of the class’s grades for each question, to help the teacher understand which questions the students struggle with and where they excel.
How do teachers grade submissions?
Locate the performance task and navigate to the submissions overview for a quick glance at which students have submitted it.
As mentioned above, you can also navigate to the Performance Task grading interface from the book book assignment overview page. Click on the assignment from the assignments overview page to navigate to the book assignment overview.
Access the submissions by clicking on ‘View results'.
Teachers can see an overview of the whole class submission status, how many responses are left to grade and navigate to the students' submissions to view science standards alignments and rubrics.
The below overview displays a heat map of how students did on the task. Marks are presented per question and in totals for each student. There are also calls to action for the teacher to send notifications to students on marks received.
Click on a student's name to view the submission and grade using the provided rubric.
Additionally, we have added the option to grade anonymously for an unbiased evaluation. This option introduces a layer of fairness and impartiality and allows teachers to reduce the risk of grading bias in higher-stakes assessments.
In the grading view, check the “Anonymous Grading” toggle. This replaces the list of named students with “Student 1,” “Student 2” etc in a randomized order. Unchecking the toggle, the list returns to showing named students.
Lastly, teachers can edit their markings and provide updated marks to the students at any time in case a mark was made erroneously and needs to be corrected.