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Google Classroom  - Creating Assignments and Materials

Google classroom  -, creating assignments and materials, google classroom creating assignments and materials.

Google Classroom: Creating Assignments and Materials

Lesson 2: creating assignments and materials.

/en/google-classroom/getting-started-with-google-classroom/content/

Creating assignments and materials

Google Classroom gives you the ability to create and assign work for your students, all without having to print anything. Questions , essays , worksheets , and readings can all be distributed online and made easily available to your class. If you haven't created a class already, check out our Getting Started with Google Classroom lesson.

Watch the video below to learn more about creating assignments and materials in Google Classroom.

Creating an assignment

Whenever you want to create new assignments, questions, or material, you'll need to navigate to the Classwork tab.

In this tab, you can create assignments and view all current and past assignments. To create an assignment, click the Create button, then select Assignment . You can also select Question if you'd like to pose a single question to your students, or Material if you simply want to post a reading, visual, or other supplementary material.

This will bring up the Assignment form. Google Classroom offers considerable flexibility and options when creating assignments.

Click the buttons in the interactive below to become familiar with the Assignment form.

This is where you'll type the title of the assignment you're creating.

Instructions

If you'd like to include instructions with your assignment, you can type them here.

Here, you can decide how many points an assignment is worth by typing the number in the form. You can also click the drop-down arrow to select Ungraded if you don't want to grade an assignment.

You can select a due date for an assignment by clicking this arrow and selecting a date from the calendar that appears. Students will have until then to submit their work.

In Google Classroom, you can sort your assignments and materials into topics. This menu allows you to select an existing topic or create a new one to place an assignment under.

Attachments

You can attach files from your computer , files from Google Drive , URLs , and YouTube videos to your assignments.

Google Classroom gives you the option of sending assignments to all students or a select number .

Once you're happy with the assignment you've created, click Assign . The drop-down menu also gives you the option to Schedule  an assignment if you'd like it to post it at a later date.

You can attach a rubric to help students know your expectations for the assignment and to give them feedback.

Once you've completed the form and clicked Assign , your students will receive an email notification letting them know about the assignment.

Google Classroom takes all of your assignments and automatically adds them to your Google Calendar. From the Classwork tab, you can click Google Calendar to pull this up and get a better overall view of the timeline for your assignments' due dates.

Using Google Docs with assignments

When creating an assignment, there may often be times when you want to attach a document from Google Docs. These can be helpful when providing lengthy instructions, study guides, and other material.

When attaching these types of files, you'll want to make sure to choose the correct setting for how your students can interact with it . After attaching one to an assignment, you'll find a drop-down menu with three options.

Let's take a look at when you might want to use each of these:

• Students can view file : Use this option if the file is simply something you want your students to view but not make any changes to.
• Students can edit file : This option can be helpful if you're providing a document you want your students to collaborate on or fill out collectively.
• Make a copy for each student : If you're creating a worksheet or document that you want each student to complete individually, this option will create a separate copy of the same document for every student.

Using topics

On the Classwork tab, you can use  topics to sort and group your assignments and material. To create a topic, click the Create button, then select Topic .

Topics can be helpful for organizing your content into the various units you teach throughout the year. You could also use it to separate your content by type , splitting it into homework, classwork, readings, and other topic areas.

In our next lesson , we'll explore how to create quizzes and worksheets with Google Forms, further expanding how you can use Google Classroom with your students.

/en/google-classroom/using-forms-with-google-classroom/content/

Templates for college and university assignments

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How to create online quizzes and homework assignments

Table of Contents

• Introduction

Single-choice

Yes/no and true/false, multiple-choice, open-ended questions, fill-in-the-blanks, image options, connected/correlated questions, score quizzes and assignments.

• Share your quiz

View answers

Announce results and grades.

• Create quizzes with Jotform AI Quiz Generator

E-learning provides you with an opportunity to reach students anywhere and keep them engaged whether they’re on the other side of town or halfway around the world. Virtual classrooms — as well as the video conferencing apps that make them possible — transcend traditional barriers that required students and teachers to meet for classes in person. 

Incorporating e-learning tools into your curriculum enables students to access an extensive range of written, audio, and visual learning material without having to deal with unwieldy paper assignments or open multiple links to access information.

Since quizzes and assignments are an essential part of the learning process, Jotform offers an all-in-one solution that allows you to

• Prepare questions in a variety of formats
• Share them to your students
• Collect their answers
• Calculate their grades
• Jotform AI Quiz Generator plugin

Best of all, Jotform offers competitive pricing for educational institutions: a 50 percent discount for teachers and a 30 percent discount on Jotform Enterprise for schools. And the best part? You don’t have to be a tech expert to create and share your online quizzes .

To get a better idea of what Jotform can do, check out the Quiz templates that highlight the different types of questions you can ask.

The sample online quiz includes a form calculation widget that automatically calculates scores based on correct and incorrect responses.

Jotform offers free, customizable quiz templates for teachers, marketers, HR departments, and more. You can create quizzes using multiple-choice, true/false, essay, or image-based questions, among others, with their drag-and-drop builder.

Quizzes can be embedded on websites or shared via links, and responses are securely stored in your Jotform account. Integrate with apps like Google Sheets or Dropbox to streamline grading and tracking. Jotform’s quiz templates save time, engage audiences and are easy to use across any device.

Creating a quiz

You can either build your own test or browse through our template gallery , which contains dozens of ready-made templates that can be tailored to match your needs. Regardless of which option you choose, it only takes a matter of minutes to create a wide range of tests, quizzes, and exams.

If you’d like to build your form from scratch, just open Jotform’s Form Builder and click on the Create Form button on the left side of the page.

From there, all you have to do is choose your preferred layout.

If you prefer to use one of the dozens of quiz templates in our template gallery, this Online Quiz Form template shows the different types of questions you can create in a matter of minutes.

Discover how to create engaging quizzes effortlessly with Jotform AI Quiz Generator .

Types of questions

Once you’ve selected a general layout for your quiz, click on the Add Form Element icon on the left side of the blank form.

Scroll through the Form Elements menu that pops up, and you’ll find a wide variety of fields you can place on your form. If you’re not quite sure where to begin, we’ll demonstrate how these fields can create common types of quiz questions.

Single-choice questions allow students to pick a single answer from a short list of choices.

Either the Single Choice or Dropdown form element will come in handy if you want to test your students’ overall knowledge about a certain subject. After placing one of them on your form, all you need to do is type your question and list all of the possible answers, including the only correct one.

Yes-no and true-false questions are common on tests and can be advantageous for your students since there’s a 50-percent chance that they’ll select the correct answer. The Single Choice form element is the best choice for these types of questions. Simply add the field to your form, type the question you want to ask, and include two answer options: “yes” and “no,” or “true” and “false.”

The Multiple Choice form element enables you to ask questions with more than one correct answer and lets students select the answers that they think are right.

If it’s important for you to understand the thought process behind each student’s response, the Short Text or Long Text form elements will allow students to explain why and how they came up with their answer. Once you place either the Short Text or Long Text field on your form, type the question you want to ask or provide an essay prompt for students.

Fill-in-the-blank questions can be particularly useful when you want to gauge how well students understand a specific subject. You can use the Passage Test or Narrative Fields widget to create a sentence, paragraph, or short passage with blank fields that students must fill in.

If you want to build some flexibility into a quiz or test, try the Dynamic Textbox widget. It allows your students to type out any number of answers to a certain question. Unlike traditional test questions that require students to select an answer from a variety of choices, the Dynamic Textbox widget enables your students to get creative, think critically, and provide answers that resonate with them.

Collect documents

With the File Upload form element feature, you can create a test that allows students to upload files , such as an essay, image, or video. This feature not only allows your students to upload their work but also enables you to collect answers and multiple documents from a single quiz.

Question tables

Question tables are handy when your class is covering a topic in detail. Our Input Table form element allows you to easily create question tables, as well as add rows and columns in a variety of formats.

For instance, students can type a keyword in one column, mark a checkbox in another one, and select an option from the dropdown menu in an adjacent column.

Once you add your question and type the options in the rows and columns, open the Input Table Properties menu, click on the Fields tab, and set the format for answers in your table using the Input Type section. You can change how responses are formatted and displayed within each column using the Column Types section under the Fields tab in the Input Table Properties menu.

Visual expression

There are times when it’s easier and more effective to ask a question using images, videos, and other graphic elements rather than just text.

Jotform allows you to build a question based on a graph, an image, or even a video by using the Image form element and one of the many video widgets , such as Iframe Embed , Loom Video Embed , Vimeo , or YouTube . After uploading an image or embedding a video, simply add a question beneath it using any format you’d like, such as a single-choice or fill-in-the-blank question.

Jotform’s photo widgets allow you to enhance your forms with images. If you want to get more creative, Jotform’s Image Radio Button widget lets you create questions and display responses that include images. All you need to do is type your question, list the image URLs, add labels for each one, and set the image size.

Drawings, paintings, and sketches

If you want to be really creative or give students some room to demonstrate their creativity, Jotform’s Draw on Image widget lets students draw, paint, sketch, and use their own handwriting on tests. You can either provide them with a blank space or ask them to draw over a certain image, such as a graph.

Once you place the widget on your form, just type your question and add the image URL.

Jotform’s flexible features can show certain test questions only if students select specific responses to previous questions. For instance, if you ask a yes-no question, Jotform’s conditional logic capabilities will show specific follow-up questions, based on whether students selected yes or no.

Setting up conditional logic in your form can get a little tricky, so we’ll walk you through the process:

• Create a yes-no question and type the follow-up questions for both yes responses and no responses.
• Click on the Settings tab toward the top of your form, select Conditions from the options menu, and create a new conditional statement.

• Select the Show/Hide Field option and use the panel that appears to set a simple formula that will dictate when certain questions are shown and hidden. You must state what actions will trigger another set of actions to occur.

• Select a question in the dropdown menu next to the IF field that will trigger another set of actions. (In this case, select the yes-no question form field.)
• Select the answer a form respondent must give in the dropdown menu beside the STATE field to trigger an action. (In this case, select the Equal to option.)
• Select the specific response to a question in the dropdown menu beside the VALUE field that’s impacted by a form respondent’s answer. (In this case, select yes. )
• Select what action will be taken as a result of the form respondent’s answer by making a selection in the dropdown menu next to the DO field. (In this case, select Show from the available options.)
• Select which form field will be impacted by an action in the dropdown menu next to the FIELD field. (In this case, choose the follow-up question for a yes response to the original question.)
• Create a conditional statement for a no response to your question by repeating these steps.

Jotform can not only help you create a wide range of quizzes, tests, and assignments but also calculate grades once students complete their work. This prevents you from spending hours on grading or inadvertently miscalculating a student’s grade.

As soon as an assignment, test, or quiz is submitted to you, Jotform can automatically calculate a grade based on how many questions were answered correctly and incorrectly.

Before you set up the grade calculation process, it’s important to assign values — or points — for correct and incorrect answers to each question. To do this, select a question, click on the Properties icon, and switch on the Calculation Values option. Use the Calculation Values table to assign points for each answer — the number zero should be used to indicate incorrect answers, while values greater than one should be used for any correct answers.

For example, if a multiple-choice question is worth four points on a test, and there are two correct answers, each correct answer should be assigned a value of two points.

Once you’ve identified the correct and incorrect answers for each question, it’s time to set up the grading process. That may sound daunting, but there’s no need to fret when you have Jotform’s Form Calculation widget.

Once you locate the widget and click on it, go to the Widget Settings menu and use the Add Field button to select all the question fields that now have a designated score. Add a “+” in between each of the form fields and save your settings. When a student fills out and submits your form, this widget will sum up the assigned values for each selected answer.

As a quick reminder, don’t forget to hide the widget from students by clicking on the question’s Properties icon and turning on the Hide field toggle switch under the Advanced tab. Doing this prevents students from viewing or changing their score until they submit their quizzes.

Share your Quiz

Now that you’re a pro at making online quizzes, tests, and assignments, why not spring a pop quiz on your students?

Assign quizzes to students and send reminder emails

Jotform’s Assign Forms feature enables you to share your form with students and control their access to your quiz.

All you need to do is click on the Publish tab at the top of your online form and select Assign Form from the list of menu options. Paste your students’ email addresses into the Invite People field, and invite all of your students to take the quiz at once.

You can save time and eliminate manual data entry by uploading a CSV file that contains a list of email addresses for your students.

You can then edit their permissions by allowing them to view, edit, or fill in the form. Once you invite your students to take the quiz, you can change their level of access to your quiz by clicking on the Assigned to icon.

Edit their permission settings by using the dropdown menu that appears on the far right side of the row that includes their name.

To ensure that all of your students are notified about the quiz or assignment, schedule automated reminder emails to be sent on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Simply go to the Publish tab toward the top of your form, select Email from the list of menu options, and click on Schedule a Reminder Email. From there, you can customize the reminder email and schedule it to be sent out on certain days and at specific times.

Share your Quiz via QR Code

After creating and customizing your quiz, adding a QR code is a simple process. Start by going to the Publish tab and locating the Quick Share options. Below the link to share and email invite fields, you’ll find a box labeled Share Form with popular social media icons. Click on the last icon, which represents a QR code.

Jotform will automatically generate a QR code for your quiz, which you can embed on your website. Simply copy the provided HTML code. You also have the option to download a PNG file of the QR code, making it easy to include the image in any printed marketing materials.

For more information, see our guide: How to create a QR code for a quiz

Once students submit their answers to your assignments or quizzes, their form responses will be sent to your Jotform inbox . You can access your inbox by clicking on the form in your My Forms page and selecting Inbox from the list of options.

Jotform can send you an email notification once someone fills out and submits your form test. All you need to do is click on the Settings tab toward the top of the screen and select Emails from the list of menu options. Select Notification Email from the list of available email options, and add your email address to the Recipients Emails field.

It can be nerve-racking for students to wait for their grades. The good news is that tallying up scores and sending them out doesn’t need to take days or even hours. In fact, Jotform can show students their grades as soon as they complete a test, exam, or assignment and submit it to you. It’s important to note, though, that Jotform can’t calculate scores for certain questions, such as those where students must upload files or type in their own answers.

All you need to do is click on the Settings tab near the top of the Form Builder and select Thank You Page from the left sidebar. The Thank You Page appears immediately after a quiz is submitted. You can customize the page, add motivational phrases, and inform your students of their grades. Just select the Form Calculator from the Form Fields dropdown menu to let your students know how they did.

Create custom quizzes effortlessly with Jotform AI Quiz Generator

Jotform AI Quiz Generator , creating personalized quizzes has never been easier. Whether you’re a student preparing for exams or a teacher looking to assess students, this tool simplifies the process and tailors it to your needs.

Enter a prompt or upload your study materials: Start by uploading any of your study resources, such as presentations, study guides, PDFs, PowerPoints, Word documents, or text files. These materials serve as the foundation for generating quiz questions.

Customize your quiz: Choose the number of questions, the types of questions (multiple-choice, true/false, etc.), and the language you prefer. The AI will then analyze your uploaded material and automatically generate a quiz based on the content.

Access and share: Once your quiz is created, you’ll receive a shareable link to distribute it to others. If you’d like to refine the quiz, Jotform’s user-friendly Form Builder allows you to easily reorder, add, or remove questions, change the quiz design, and even regenerate specific questions.

After completing your quiz, you’ll see your score immediately. To review the correct answers, simply open the Form Builder, select a question, and click on the Properties gear icon. In the Options tab, scroll down to Calculation Values, where the correct answers are marked with a value higher than zero.

Additionally, your answers can be stored in Jotform Tables , allowing you to compare multiple quiz attempts and track your progress over time.

With Jotform AI Quiz Generator, you have all the tools you need to create effective, customized quizzes in minutes.

Thank you for helping improve the Jotform Blog. 🎉

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3 Comments:

More than a year ago

Best reliable 2022 assignment creator in Melbourne When it comes to doing tough assignment questions by own, students get puzzled between work and academic responsibilities and seek online help for their assignments in Melbourne to get the best grades in their studies. Allassignmenthelp is reliable and easily accessible when it comes to search assignment helpers in Melbourne. Our online task helping creators gives students with online tutorial help as they work on their homework. The main challenge students face is help in complex subjects like physics, algebra, and science which leads them in need of professional help to qualify for the next level of education.

Now there is Random Quiz, a Google Sheets add-on that creates an online quiz that gives each student a different quiz. Visit Google Sheets, download the Random Quiz add-on to experience a great piece of software.

As an elementary school teacher, I tend to use technology a lot even before the pandemic. But as all of my fellow teachers can attest to, it has been a challenge to stay connected with our students and try to carry on the same level of education as it was before the pandemic. I obviously knew that it would be impossible to keep the same standards, but I was at least trying to come up with solutions that would boost the education level as high as possible. I was a huge fan of ed-tech solutions, so I started looking for some options in order to conduct quizzes online, in a fun and secure way. Jotform truly knocked the ball out of the park with this extremely easy to use quiz builder, I also love the fact that it makes taking quizzes and finishing assignments easier for my students. It's in times like this, I notice how wonderful and helpful technology is when it comes to education.

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Gemini now has added data protection. Chat with Gemini to save time, personalize learning and inspire creativity.

Gemini now has added data protection. chat now ., easily distribute, analyze, and grade student work with assignments for your lms.

Assignments is an application for your learning management system (LMS). It helps educators save time grading and guides students to turn in their best work with originality reports — all through the collaborative power of Google Workspace for Education.

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Bring your favorite tools together within your LMS

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Built with the latest Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standards for robust security and easy installation in your LMS

Save time distributing and grading classwork

Distribute personalized copies of Google Drive templates and worksheets to students

Grade consistently and transparently with rubrics integrated into student work

Add rich feedback faster using the customizable comment bank

Examine student work to ensure authenticity

Compare student work against hundreds of billions of web pages and over 40 million books with originality reports

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“Assignments enable faculty to save time on the mundane parts of grading and...spend more time on providing more personalized and relevant feedback to students.” Benjamin Hommerding , Technology Innovationist, St. Norbert College

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Find all of the same features of Assignments in your existing Classroom environment

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• How to create and manage online assignments for learners
• How to plan successful online assignments for learners
• Know your learners and their current needs
• Assess your resources including digital tools
• How to make online assignments for learners
• Provide clear and concise instruction
• Support learners with orientation and an intuitive system
• Promote interaction and collaboration
• Managing online assignments 
• Communicate effectively
• Monitor learner progress
• Provide personalized and differentiated support 
• Assess and give feedback
• Additional resources for online assignment creation
• Use AI to plan and teach 
• Team up on content creation
• Discover why vetting edtech tools for inclusivity matters, learn key questions and criteria, and unlock strategies to leverage edtech for inclusivity.

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Developing effective assignments for online learning does not have to be daunting. M aster the art of creating and managing online assignments for learners, whether you are with learners using 1:1 devices in a classroom, teaching hybrid or virtually.

One amazing benefit of today’s K-12 education community is the amount of resources, tips and tools available online from educators just like you. Tapping their experience, we’ll show how to create online assignments using digital tools that offer learners at least as much rigor as the ones you may have taught traditionally. 

As importantly, you will get tips on successfully managing your students during the learning process. Finally, this blog will give you teaching resources, including alternatives to building online lessons from scratch.  

An assignment lacking clear structure and substance can spell disaster. Not only will it be harder to manage, but learners may end up frustrated or fail to really learn the material. If not managed well, technology tools can turn into exciting and distracting shiny objects. 

To avoid the “edutainment” trap, ensure that onscreen activities support defined learning objectives tied to your district’s standards. Beginning with a strategically planned lesson provides the foundation for whatever digital tools you choose to incorporate. 

The first step is to clarify what skills or knowledge your learners need to master before moving to the next level. Next, consider different types of assignments online for students to see how they could facilitate this learning. 

One brilliant advantage of digital delivery is the ability to tailor assignments to specific learner needs and interests. While selecting which kind of assignment to create, consider what might work best for your learners. Consider specific learners who may need accommodations in content or delivery. 

If you don’t already have data to understand the level of knowledge and prior experience learners have in the subject, consider using a Quizlet, survey or other fact-finding tool. Remember the backdrop of what is going on in the students’ surroundings and lives may have a bearing on their learning needs. Consider circumstances that may be affecting learners personally or in their community. 

Tap your personal teaching experience before exploring digital resources. Consider how your own understanding and knowledge of the subject can best shine through digital tools. 

Having strategies in place can help save time and reduce stress during the process of moving your expertise to an online format. Remember, the extra time put into initial start-up pays off in the long run because digital content can be reused over and over. Lessons in a digital format are shareable, adaptable and updateable.

Consider variety and higher-level learning as you build assignments that are both engaging and contribute to long-term student goals. Once your academic aims are clear, look for digital tools designed to adapt to your needs as an educator and enhance what you would do in a non-digital format.

Make sure the assignment includes a logical flow from beginning to end. Organize content with headings and bullet points as well as multimedia that breaks up text. Include measurable objectives so learners can clearly understand expectations for the assignment. In some cases, it may be necessary to provide easy-to-understand instruction for each task learners need to complete. Remember you may not be there to fill in the blanks if you leave out an important detail.

Getting started with a few basics can simplify the process of creating dynamic digital content . Recording short videos is an excellent way to simulate actually being there, especially when teaching concepts asynchronously. To record what is on your computer screen, try a screencast program, like Screencastify or Loom for Education . Here you can include your face and help learners better understand you by watching you speak.  

Along with video and audio recordings, further support deeper understanding of the subject matter with multimedia elements. These can include graphics, animations, digital graphics, p odcasts, interactive quizzes and simulations like trivia games. 

Even the best instruction and assignments won’t make the learning experience pleasant if students have to spend extra hours figuring out where to find assignments and instructions. Just because students are often tech-savvy does not mean all of them can immediately navigate your school’s LMS unsupported. 

Your online assignment at the beginning of the school term could be a simple one that orients learners while providing the opportunity to get hands-on practice using the system. That helps them get used to the workflow and setup. Frustration is easy to mitigate by structuring assignments and using an intuitive learning platform. One example is Hāpara Workspace with an easy-to-view layout that organizes goals, resources, assessments and rubrics into columns.

At the heart of learning is interacting with peers and collaborating. Include activities and projects that support individuals as they practice engaging and working together with other learners. Some learners who feel more comfortable working alone may need extra encouragement and support. This is an opportunity to promote deeper learning and connection by introducing resources that are relevant to students.

Teachers can quickly share resources with groups, or better yet, give learners the opportunity to add their own resources in Hāpara Workspace. Upload everything from videos, links to apps, images and online articles to Google Docs, Slides, Forms and Drawings into Workspace. Group members can access all these resources for shared activities , assessments and collaborative projects.

Once you have a well-designed assignment with clear instructions tailored to the needs of different learners, it’s essential to give them guidance. The amount of management you need to provide can vary significantly.

Clearly communicate with students throughout the learning process all the way through to assessment. Regular communication helps students stay informed and engaged. You can manage learners as they build toward mastery in an online environment with Hāpara tools. 

They provide superior student communication tools, including date reminders for learners and online progress tracking for teachers.

Hāpara Student Dashboard is an online assignment tracker that helps learners develop crucial executive functioning skills. It will help them gain practice organizing their own time, managing and prioritizing their assignments and assessments. 

Educators can help learners build upon these skills by providing formative feedback that encourages students to take risks and learn from mistakes. Directly from Hāpara Teacher Dashboard , you can open a learner’s assignment or assessment and provide personalized support. This timely feedback helps learners move toward their academic goals more quickly and confidently.

Monitor how learners are progressing through the assignment. This can inform you whether you need to check in with a learner. Teacher Dashboard shows each learner’s most recent files and when they last modified it. You can also send due date reminders to the class or individual learners through an instant message in Hāpara Highlights .

With Teacher Dashboard, it’s easy to leave personalized feedback in learners’ recent files and share differentiated resources directly to their screens.

Pull from your own Google Drive or create a new Google Doc, Slide or Drawing on the spot to share with the class, a group or an individual learner. 

When a learner can’t find a Google file, teachers can access a learner’s Google Drive with one click in Hāpara. S earch for missing files by title or content and filter to view deleted or unshared files.

Evaluate learners’ understanding and progress with different types of assessment methods, including rubrics, quizzes, peer review and presentations. 

Assessments should provide meaningful feedback for learners and educators alike. Use learner feedback to improve on each new assignment you develop. Data on engagement, task completion rates and learner satisfaction will help you make adjustments to improve a future assignment.

Several alternatives to building your lessons from the ground up are available. These can save time and hassle. To begin with, Google Assignments is a free online assignment solution. To make this even easier, in Hāpara Highlights, as teachers monitor what learners are doing online and offering personalized support, they can quickly share Google Classroom Assignments, Questions and Materials. 

Finding free assignments online is another option. With the Discover feature in Hāpara Workspace , you can access online assignments other educators have created from around the world. Search thousands of curriculum-aligned Workspaces by standard, subject, grade level or topic. Then copy and modify them to meet your learners’ needs. 

Teachers can also use AI to support learning content development and in class with students.

Among the many ways ChatGPT can be used by teachers is helping them create new material, and generate ideas and quizzes. They can quickly personalize the same content in several ways to reach different learners. For example, high school literacy specialist Amanda Kremnitzer told EdWeek that she used ChatGPT to create outlines for her multiple learners who require them as a supplementary aid.  

Consider shouldering the effort and building content together as a team. Individual members of departments or subject-grade level teams can develop the type of content they are best at and share. Or they can collaborate as a group. As mentioned, you can use the Discover option in Hāpara Workspace to find assignments educators from around the world have created. 

If you are looking for a way to create, curate and manage a collection of digital assignments that only your school or district can access, consider Hāpara’s Private Library . With just a click, you can easily distribute your online assignments to educators in your school or district.

Discover why vetting edtech tools for inclusivity matters, and unlock strategies to leverage edtech for inclusivity.

About the author, sheilamary koch, you might also enjoy, pin it on pinterest.

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• Create assignments

Create an assignment

This article is for teachers.

When you create an assignment, you can post it immediately, save a draft, or schedule it to post at a later date. After students complete and turn in their work, you can grade and return it to the students.

Open all | Close all

Create & post assignments

When you create an assignment, you can:

• Select one or more classes

Select individual students

Add a grade category, add a grading period, change the point value, add a due date or time, add a topic, add attachments, add a rubric.

• Turn on originality reports

Go to classroom.google.com  and click Sign In.

Sign in with your Google Account. For example,  [email protected] or [email protected] .  Learn more .

• Enter the title and any instructions.

You can continue to edit and customize your assignment. Otherwise, if you’re ready, find below to post, schedule, or save your assignment .

Select additional classes

Assignments to multiple classes go to all students in those classes.

• Create an assignment (details above).

Unless you’re selecting multiple classes, you can select individual students. You can’t select more than 100 students at a time.

• Click a student's name to select them.

Use grade categories to organize assignments. With grade categories, you and your students can find the category an assignment belongs to, such as Homework or Essays . Teachers also find the categories on the Grades page.

For more information on grade categories, go to Add a grade category to posts or Set up grading .

To organize assignments and grades into your school or district’s grading structure, create grading periods, such as quarters or semesters.

• From the menu, select a grading period.

Tip: Before adding a grading period to an assignment, create a grading period for the class first. Learn how to create or edit grading periods .

You can change the point value of an assignment or make the assignment ungraded. By default, assignments are set at 100 points.

• Under Points , click the value.
• Enter a new point value or select Ungraded .

By default, an assignment has no due date. To set a due date:

• Click a date on the calendar.
• To create a topic, click Create topic and enter a topic name.
• Click a topic in the list to select it.

Note : You can only add one topic to an assignment.

Learn more about how to add topics to the Classwork page .

• Create an assignment.

• Important: Google Drive files can be edited by co-teachers and are read-only to students. To change these share options, you can stop, limit, or change sharing .

• To add YouTube videos, an admin must turn on this option. Learn about access settings for your Google Workspace for Education account .
• You can add interactive questions to YouTube video attachments. Learn how to add interactive questions to YouTube video attachments .

• Tip: When you attach a practice set to an assignment, you can't edit it.

• If you find a message that you don’t have permission to attach a file, click Copy . Classroom makes a copy of the file to attach to the assignment and saves it to the class Drive folder.
• Students can view file —All students can read the file, but not edit it.
• Students can edit file —All students share the same file and can make changes to it.

Note : This option is only available before you post an assignment.

Use an add-on

For instructions, go to Use add-ons in Classroom

For instructions, go to Create or reuse a rubric for an assignment .

For instructions, go to Turn on originality reports .

You can post an assignment immediately, or schedule it to post later. If you don’t want to post it yet, you can save it as a draft. To find scheduled and drafted assignments, click Classwork .

Post an assignment

• Follow the steps above to create an assignment.
• Click Assign to immediately post the assignment.

Schedule the assignment to post later

Scheduled assignments might be delayed up to 5 minutes after the post time.

• To schedule the same assignment across multiple classes, make sure to select all classes you want to include.
• When you enter a time, Classroom defaults to PM unless you specify AM.
• (Optional) Select a due date and topic for each class.
• (Optional) To replicate your selected time and date for the first class into all subsequent classes, click Copy settings to all .
• Click Schedule . The assignment will automatically post at the scheduled date and time.

After scheduling multiple assignments at once, you can still edit assignments later by clicking into each class and changing them individually.

Save an assignment as a draft

• Follow the steps above to create an assignment

You can open and edit draft assignments on the Classwork page.

Manage assignments

Edits affect individual classes. For multi-class assignments, make edits in each class.

Note : If you change an assignment's name, the assignment's Drive folder name isn't updated. Go to Drive and rename the folder.

Edit a posted assignment

• Enter your changes and click Save .

Edit a scheduled assignment

• Enter your changes and click Schedule .

Edit a draft assignment

Changes are automatically saved.

• Assign it immediately (details above).
• Schedule it to post at a specific date and time (details above).
• Click a class.

You can only delete an assignment on the Classwork page.

If you delete an assignment, all grades and comments related to the assignment are deleted. However, any attachments or files created by you or the students are still available in Drive.

Related articles

• Create or reuse a rubric for an assignment
• Create a quiz assignment
• Create a question
• Use add-ons in Classroom
• Create, edit, delete, or share a practice set
• Learn about interactive questions for YouTube videos in Google Classroom

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In this classic activity, learners can complete sentences by filling in the blanks with the right answers.

Ask your students to reorder a set of jumbled options in ascending, descending, or chronological order.

Present learners with the opportunity to select one or more correct answers from a list of options.

Gamify your assessment with shuffled text and images that your students can pair together.

Choose between a plain background or an image and watch as students give shape to their thoughts with colors, highlighters, and more.

Motivate learners to think critically by dragging and dropping the right options to complete a sentence.

Let students take center stage with video responses so you can assess their presentation skills.

Check the pulse of your classroom with a fun poll or vote.

Use Lessons to create an instructor-led experience where slides and multimedia are combined with quiz and poll questions.

Engage your students’ higher order thinking skills and encourage them to dig deep with open-ended questions.

Analyze speaking skills by allowing students to voice their answers using the audio response feature.

Prompt your students to choose between a set of drop-down options to fill out the blanks in a piece of text.

How to Make a Quiz

Launch: Visit Quizizz , click on ‘Create’, and select the ‘Quiz’ option

Create: Mix and match 15 different question types including Multiple Choice, Reorder, Graphing, and Fill in the Blanks to make your own quiz, or

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Create Online Interactive Activities

Don’t reinvent the wheel. TeacherMade makes it simple to convert your existing paper documents, PDFs, images, and Microsoft Word .docx files into interactive activities .

Create Digital Activities In Minutes

Step 1: Upload your file. The file you upload becomes the background of your new online worksheet. (We support these file types.)

Step 2: Add fields for student responses.

Step 3: Add answers to questions for self-scoring.

Step 4: Send an assignment link to students or sync with your school’s LMS platform.

Step 5: Get instant feedback and results.

Stop Creating Worksheets From Scratch In Google Classroom Apps, Schoology, And Canvas. Convert Your Current Documents Into Interactive Activities Online.

Use the resources you’ve already created with teachermade..

Do you feel like you can’t use your existing teaching materials? TeacherMade allows you to create interactive activities from materials you already use. With 15 question types, TeacherMade provides flexible practice, feedback, and assessment for a variety of learners. 

Save Time With Digital Activities

You can regain hours in your day by digitizing activities you already have and automating grading with TeacherMade. With auto-grading, you can easily track student progress and data to inform your teaching. 

You also get the freedom to ditch the copy machine and stacks of collected work when you incorporate digital activities.

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TeacherMade reduces your stress by juggling different apps to complete assignments, assessments, and activities . Improve classroom engagement, and don’t lose your students juggling several other programs. 

TeacherMade Lets You Focus On Teaching

Our intuitive software is perfect for technology beginners. If you can use Google Slides or Powerpoint, you can use TeacherMade. Reclaim your nights and weekends with TeacherMade . Your lesson planning will be streamlined.

Check Out Interactive Activities On TeacherMade

You Can Make Your Google Slides And PowerPoint Presentations Interactive With TeacherMade

TeacherMade Slide View is an innovative online tool that allows teachers to create interactive digital resources quickly and easily. By using this platform, teachers can transform PDFs into interactive learning materials that engage students and promote active learning.

TeacherMade Slide View is that it saves teachers time. 

The platform automates many time-consuming tasks, such as grading multiple-choice questions and providing feedback to students. This means that teachers can spend more time focusing on instruction and providing targeted support to students who need it.

TeacherMade Slide View makes learning more interactive.

Teachers can add a variety of interactive elements to their materials. Teachers can incorporate multiple-choice questions, open-ended questions, and even audio and video files to create engaging and dynamic learning experiences for their students. This approach can help students become more invested in their learning and increase their understanding of key concepts.

TeacherMade Slide View is paperless. 

Teachers and students can access their materials from any device with an internet connection. This makes it easy for students to complete assignments and access learning materials from home, on-the-go, or in the classroom. This feature also makes it easy for teachers to collaborate and share resources with colleagues.

Interactive Worksheet FAQ

What is an interactive activity.

Activities that you create with educational apps. TeacherMade allows you to convert PDF worksheets you already have and turn them into digital activities that are engaging for your students. You can add multimedia like video, audio, images, and links. 

How do I make my activities interactive?

It’s simple to make an interactive activity with TeacherMade. First, choose a file (PDFs, images, and Word Docx all work great!). Then upload your file to the TeacherMade system. Add fields for students’ responses, and then add answers for self-scoring. Send your students the link, and then sit back and enjoy the instant feedback from our auto-score feature. 

How do I create an interactive activity in Word?

If Microsoft Word is your preferred place to make assignments, it’s easy to turn your DOCX files into interactive activities. Upload your file to TeacherMade. You can add digital question fields to the activity using our drag-and-drop tools and add answers for self-grading. Once you send a link to your students, they can complete the assignment on their devices. 

How do I create an interactive activity in Google Classroom?

After creating an interactive activity in Google Docs or Slides, click “save as” and choose PDF. Upload your PDF file into TeacherMade. Your PDF becomes the background to your interactive activity. You add question fields on the top of this background using our drag-and-drop tools. From there, you can add an optional answer key for self-grading. Then just send the assignment link to your students. 

What Our Users Say About TeacherMade

Turn your activities into effective interactive activities

Try out the resource that 300,000 teachers have already discovered. Save time and get back to teaching by logging into TeacherMade today.

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• Teaching Tips

20 Interactive Classroom Activities for College Students [Plus: Free List of 45+ Activities]

Planning to use interactive classroom activities intentionally can really transform the learning dynamic. Here are 20 activities to get you started.

Top Hat Staff

How interactive are your classroom activities? Do you have less energy for class than you used to? Do you find student grades declining? And are the teaching methods you’ve always relied on not working as well as they once did? We spoke to two college instructors, Chris Merlo and Monika Semma. Their strategies for interactive classroom activities will energize your class and get the discussion moving again.

Table of contents

• Why are interactive activities important in college?

6 community-building activities

5 communication activities for college students, 3 motivational activities for college students.

• 6 team-building activities for college students

Interactive classroom activities, in short

Why are interactive classroom activities important.

Merlo, a computer science teacher, says that interactive classroom activities are not new to students, and one main reason why teachers have trouble connecting is that they fail to adapt to their students’ perspectives.

“My six-year-old son doesn’t find iPads amazing; to him, they’ve always just existed. Similarly, to a lot of students today, experiences like team exercises and flipped classrooms, while foreign to many instructors are not new.

“If we care about reaching today’s students, who seem to have a different idea of student responsibilities than we had, perhaps we have to reach them on their terms.

“In my thirties, I could still find a lot of similarities with my twenty-something students. But now, in my forties? Not so much. What I’ve started to realize is that it isn’t just the little things, like whether they’ve seen Ghostbusters. (They haven’t.) It’s the big things, like how they learn.”

Semma, a humanities TA, found that the chalk-and-talk approach failed on her first day in front of a class. “It was a lot like parallel parking in front of 20 people,” she said. “I looked more like a classmate. I dropped the eraser on my face whilst trying to write my name on the board. One of my students called me ‘mom.’”

“I chalked it up to first day jitters, but that same quietness crept its way back into my classroom for the next tutorial, and the next tutorial and the next. While nearly silent in class, my students were rather vocal in the endless stream of emails that flooded my inbox. That way I knew they wanted to learn. I also knew that I had to find a way to make tutorials more engaging.”

From these experiences, Merlo and Semma now share some interactive classroom activities for students and for teachers that can turn a quiet classroom full of people unwilling to speak up to a hive of debate, making the student learning experience more collaborative for everyone.

Energize your college classroom and get discussions flowing. Download The Best Classroom Activities for College Courses to engage and motivate students.

1. Open-ended questions

Chris Merlo: Open-ended questions don’t take any planning. All they take is a class with at least one student who isn’t too shy. I remember a class a few semesters ago that started with nine students. Due to a couple of medical conditions and a job opportunity, three of the students had to drop the semester. The problem was that these three students were the ones I counted on to ask questions and keep the class lively! Once I was left with six introverted people, conversations during class seemed to stop.

By luck, I stumbled on something that got the students talking again. I said, “What has been the most difficult thing about [the project that was due soon]?” This opened the floodgates—students love to complain, especially about us and our demands. This one simple question led to twenty minutes of discussion involving all six students. I wasn’t even sure what a couple of these students’ voices sounded like, but once I gave them an open-ended opportunity to complain about an assignment, they were off to the races. A truly successful classroom activity.

2. What’s wrong with this example?

Chris Merlo: Students also love to find a professor’s mistakes—like me, I’m sure you’ve found this out the hard way. When I teach computer science, I will make up a program that, for instance, performs the wrong arithmetic, and have students find the bug. In a particularly quiet or disengaged class, you can incentivize students with five points on the next exam, or something similar.

If you teach history, you might use flawed examples that change a key person’s name, such as “King Henry VIII (instead of King John) signed the Magna Carta in 1215,” or match a person to an incorrect event: “Gavrilo Princip is considered to have fired the first shot in the Spanish Civil War (instead of World War I).” Beam these examples on the whiteboard, and let the students’ competitiveness drive them to get the right answer before their classmates.

3. Let students critique each other

Chris Merlo: This can go badly if you don’t set some ground rules for civility, but done well, classroom activities like this really help open up collaborative learning. One of my colleagues devised a great exercise: First, give students about half of their class time to write instructions that an imaginary robot can understand to draw a recognizable picture, like a corporate logo, without telling students what will happen later. Then assign each student’s instructions to a randomly chosen classmate, and have the classmate pretend to be the robot, attempting to follow the instructions and draw the same logo.

After a few minutes, introduce a specific student who can share their results with the class, then ask their partner to share the initial instructions. This method gives students a chance to communicate with each other (“That’s not what I meant!”) and laugh and bond, while learning an important lesson.

This exercise teaches computer science students the difficulty and importance of writing clear instructions. I have seen this exercise not only teach pairs of such students meaningful lessons but encourage friendships that extended beyond my classroom.

Get students participating with these 45 classroom activities

4. Pass the “mic”

Monika Semma: As an instructor, it’s amazing how much information you can gather from a student-centered review session. Specifically, if you leave the review in the hands of your students, you can get an easy and thorough assessment of what is being absorbed, and what is being left by the wayside. The more you encourage participation, the more you’ll see where your class is struggling and the more comfortable students will become with course material. Here’s how to transform a standard review into one of your more popular classroom activities:

• A week before the review, ask students to email you two to five key terms or theories that they feel they need to brush up on. Take all that data and compress it until you have a solid working list of what students want to review most.
• In class, provide students with visual access to the list (I found writing all the terms on a chalkboard to be most effective). Instruct the class to have their notes out in front of them, with a pad of paper or blank Word document at their fingertips, and encourage them to take notes as the review is in progress.
• A trinket of sorts (I highly recommend a plush ball), used as a “microphone,” helps to give students equal opportunity to direct the review without putting individuals on the spot too aggressively. The rules are simple: she or he who holds the “mic” can pick one term from the list and using their notes, can offer up what they already know about the term or concept, what they are unsure of, or what they need more elaboration on.
• Actively listen to the speaker and give them some positive cues if they seem unsure; it’s okay to help them along the way, but important to step back and let this review remain student-centered. Once the speaker has said their piece, open the floor to the rest of the class for questions or additional comments. If you find that the discussion has taken a departure from the right direction, re-center the class and provide further elaboration if need be.
• Erase each term discussed from the list as you go, and have the speaker pass (or throw) on the “mic” to a fellow classmate, and keep tossing the ball around after each concept/term is discussed.

Students will have a tendency to pick the terms that they are most comfortable speaking about and those left consistently untouched will give you a clear assessment of the subjects in which your class is struggling, and where comprehension is lacking. Once your class has narrowed down the list to just a few terms, you can switch gears into a more classic review session. Bringing a bit of interaction and fun into a review can help loosen things up during exam time, when students and teachers alike are really starting to feel the pressure.

5. Use YouTube for classroom activities

Monika Semma: Do you remember the pure and utter joy you felt upon seeing your professor wheel in the giant VHS machine into class? Technology has certainly changed—but the awesome powers of visual media have not. Making your students smile can be a difficult task, but by channeling your inner Bill Nye the Science Guy you can make university learning fun again.

A large part of meaningful learning is finding interactive classroom activities that are relevant to daily life—and I can think of no technology more relevant to current students than YouTube.

A crafty YouTube search can yield a video relevant to almost anything in your curriculum and paired with an essay or academic journal, a slightly silly video can go a long way in helping your students contextualize what they are learning.

Even if your comedic attempts plunge into failure, at the very least, a short clip will get the class discussion ball rolling. Watch the video as a class and then break up into smaller groups to discuss it. Get your students thinking about how the clip they are shown pairs with the primary sources they’ve already read.

6. Close reading

Monika Semma: In the humanities, we all know the benefits of close reading activities—they get classroom discussion rolling and students engaging with the material and open up the floor for social and combination learners to shine. “Close reading” is a learning technique in which students are asked to conduct a detailed analysis or interpretation of a small piece of text. It is particularly effective in getting students to move away from the general and engage more with specific details or ideas.

If you’re introducing new and complex material to your class, or if you feel as though your students are struggling with an equation, theory, or concept; giving them the opportunity to break it down into smaller and more concrete parts for further evaluation will help to enhance their understanding of the material as a whole.

And while this technique is often employed in the humanities, classroom activities like this can be easily transferred to any discipline. A physics student will benefit from having an opportunity to break down a complicated equation in the same way that a biology student can better understand a cell by looking at it through a microscope.

In any case, evaluating what kinds of textbooks, lesson plans and pedagogy we are asking our students to connect with is always a good idea.

Brainwriting

Group size: 10 students (minimum)

Course type: Online (synchronous), in-person

This activity helps build rapport and respect in your classroom. After you tackle a complex lecture topic, give students time to individually reflect on their learnings. This can be accomplished through guided prompts or left as an open-ended exercise. Once students have gathered their thoughts, encourage them to share their views either through an online discussion thread or a conversation with peers during class time.

Concept mapping

Collaborative concept mapping is the process of visually organizing concepts and ideas and understanding how they relate to each other. This exercise is a great way for students to look outside of their individual experiences and perspectives. Groups can use this tactic to review previous work or to help them map ideas for projects and assignments. For in-person classes, you can ask students to cover classroom walls with sticky notes and chart paper. For online classes, there are many online tools that make it simple to map out connections between ideas, like Google Docs or the digital whiteboard feature in Zoom.

Group size: Groups of 5–10 students 

Propose a topic or issue to your class. Group students together (or in breakout rooms if you’re teaching remotely) according to the position they take on the specific issue. Ask the groups of students to come up with a few arguments or examples to support their position. Write each group’s statements on the virtual whiteboard and use these as a starting point for discussion. A natural next step is to debate the strengths and weaknesses of each argument, to help students improve their critical thinking and analysis skills. 

Make learning active with these 45 interactive classroom activities

Compare and contrast

Group size: Groups of 5–10 students

Ask your students to focus on a specific chapter in your textbook. Then, place them in groups and ask them to make connections and identify differences between ideas that can be found in course readings and other articles and videos they may find. This way, they can compare their ideas in small groups and learn from one another’s perspectives. In online real-time classes, instructors can use Zoom breakout rooms to put students in small groups.

Assess/diagnose/act

This activity will improve students’ problem-solving skills and can help engage them in more dynamic discussions. Start by proposing a topic or controversial statement. Then follow these steps to get conversations going. In online classes, students can either raise their hands virtually or use an online discussion forum to engage with their peers. 

• Assessment: What is the issue or problem at hand?
• Diagnosis: What is the root cause of this issue or problem?
• Action: How can we solve the issue?

Moral dilemmas

Group size: Groups of 3–7 students 

Provide students with a moral or ethical dilemma, using a hypothetical situation or a real-world situation. Then ask them to explore potential solutions as a group. This activity encourages students to think outside the box to develop creative solutions to the problem. In online learning environments, students can use discussion threads or Zoom breakout rooms.

Conversation stations

Group size: Groups of 4–6 students 

Course type: In-person

This activity exposes students’ ideas in a controlled way, prompting discussions that flow naturally. To start, share a list of discussion questions pertaining to a course reading, video or case study. Put students into groups and give them five-to-ten minutes to discuss, then have two students rotate to another group. The students who have just joined a group have an opportunity to share findings from their last discussion, before answering the second question with their new group. After another five-to-ten minutes, the students who haven’t rotated yet will join a new group.

This or that

Course type: Online (synchronous or asynchronous), in-person

This activity allows students to see where their peers stand on a variety of different topics and issues. Instructors should distribute a list of provocative statements before class, allowing students to read ahead. Then, they can ask students to indicate whether they agree, disagree or are neutral on the topic in advance, using an online discussion thread or Google Doc. In class, use another discussion thread or live chat to have students of differing opinions share their views. After a few minutes, encourage one or two members in each group to defend their position amongst a new group of students. Ask students to repeat this process for several rounds to help familiarize themselves with a variety of standpoints.

6 team-building classroom activities for college students

Snowball discussions  .

Group size: 2–4 students per group

Assign students a case study or worksheet to discuss with a partner, then have them share their thoughts with the larger group. Use breakout rooms in Zoom and randomly assign students in pairs with a discussion question. After a few minutes, combine rooms to form groups of four. After another five minutes, combine groups of four to become a larger group of eight—and so on until the whole class is back together again.

Make it personal

Group size: Groups of 2–8 students

After you’ve covered a topic or concept in your lecture, divide students into small discussion groups (or breakout rooms online). Ask the groups questions like “How did this impact your prior knowledge of the topic?” or “What was your initial reaction to this source/article/fact?” to encourage students to reflect on their personal connections to the course concepts they are learning.

Philosophical chairs

Group size: 20–25 students (maximum)

A statement that has two possible responses—agree or disagree—is read out loud. Depending on whether they agree or disagree with this statement, students move to one side of the room or the other. After everyone has chosen a side, ask one or two students on each side to take turns defending their positions. This allows students to visualize where their peers’ opinions come from, relative to their own.

Get more interactive classroom activities here

Affinity mapping

Group size: Groups of 3–8 students 

Course type: Online (synchronous)

Place students in small groups (or virtual breakout rooms) and pose a broad question or problem to them that is likely to result in lots of different ideas, such as “What was the greatest innovation of the 21st century?” or “How would society be different if  _____ never occurred?” Ask students to generate responses by writing ideas on pieces of paper (one idea per page) or in a discussion thread (if you’re teaching online). Once lots of ideas have been generated, have students begin grouping their ideas into similar categories, then label the categories and discuss why the ideas fit within them, how the categories relate to one another and so on. This allows students to engage in higher-level thinking by analyzing ideas and organizing them in relation to one another. 

Socratic seminar

Group size: 20 students (minimum)

Ask students to prepare for a discussion by reviewing a course reading or group of texts and coming up with a few higher-order discussion questions about the text. In class, pose an introductory, open-ended question. From there, students continue the conversation, prompting one another to support their claims with evidence from previous course concepts or texts. There doesn’t need to be a particular order to how students speak, but they are encouraged to respectfully share the floor with their peers.

Concentric circles

Group size: 20 students (maximum)

Students form two circles: an inner circle and an outer circle. Each student on the inside is paired with a student on the outside; they face each other. Pose a question to the whole group and have pairs discuss their responses with each other. After three-to-five minutes, have students on the outside circle move one space to the right so they are standing in front of a new person. Pose a new question, and the process is repeated, exposing students to the different perspectives of their peers.

Making your classes more interactive should help your students want to come to class and take part in it. Giving them a more active role will give them a sense of ownership, and this can lead to students taking more pride in their work and responsibility for their grades.

Use these 45 classroom activities in your course to keep students engaged

A more interactive class can also make things easier for you—the more work students do in class, the less you have to do. Even two minutes of not talking can re-energize you for the rest of the class.

Plus, these six methods outlined above don’t require any large-scale changes to your class prep. Set up a couple of activities in advance here and there, to support what you’ve been doing, and plan which portion of your class will feature them.

The reality remains that sometimes, students do have to be taught subject matter that is anything but exciting. That doesn’t mean that we can’t make it more enjoyable to teach or learn. It may not be possible to incorporate classroom activities into every lecture, but finding some room for these approaches can go a long way in facilitating a positive learning environment.

And let’s not forget, sometimes even an educator needs a brief departure from the everyday-ordinary-sit-and-listen-to-me-lecture regimen.

Recommended Readings

5 Ways to Advocate for Your Students During the Presidential Election

The Ultimate Guide to Metacognition for Post-Secondary Courses

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20 Tools to Help Teachers Create an Online Assessment

Odette Falone

There’s no denying that some aspects of education are significantly enriched with online tools. Just think of how technology has helped us during the pandemic with the digital classrooms, virtual meetings, and online testing environments. Even when all this is over, some educational tools will continue to be used due to their ability to enrich both teaching and learning, like online assessment platforms. Because of this, teachers need to stay on top of the game by creating a resourceful toolbox with some of the most useful online platforms for educators - which is where we come in.

In this article, we’ll round up the 20 best online assessment tools for 2023. Whether we’re talking about a blended learning environment, a flipped classroom, a hybrid classroom, or an eLearning education, the following platforms can help teachers easily plan, share, track, and evaluate students’ knowledge.

The 20 Best Online Assessment Platforms for 2023

All the tools on our list provide useful resources that can be used in almost any classroom, but that doesn’t mean that you absolutely need them. Let’s see what each tool is about, what it offers, and how it can help you achieve your teaching goals. Compare them and choose the one(s) that suit(s) your teaching methodologies best.

Let’s start with the industry leader and the world’s most popular learning management system - Moodle. It’s an online learning solution that serves the needs of thousands of universities and schools worldwide.

Within minutes teachers can create their own learning site where students will get access to video lectures, books, texts, presentations, and other learning materials.

One of the best things about Moodle is its amazing product development. In other words, Moodle has earned its stellar reputation by being incredibly user-friendly, with elaborate documentation that leaves no room for questions, even if you’re a first-time user.

In Moodle, teachers can easily set up their course, upload course materials, add students, track progress, use assignments to assess students, post discussions in a forum-like style, test students through quizzes, and even set up peer-assessment workshop activities.

And, we haven’t even got to the best part, Moodle is an open-source platform, which means that it’s completely free to download, install, host, modify, and use for your own site. However, there’s also an option to subscribe to MoodleCloud and pay to have everything stored online.

Edulastic is an amazing online assessment platform that gives teachers the opportunity to assess, instruct, and measure the progress of their students’ performance. The goal of the tool is to help teachers prepare students for standardized testing.

Here’s everything it covers:

• Diagnostic and formative assessments for identifying learning gaps;
• Differentiated assignments based on identified strengths and weaknesses to remediate, reinforce, or challenge their knowledge;
• Measure and track common benchmarks and previous performance to find the most effective assignments for increasing students’ scores;
• Extra security layers to ensure the assessments data is valid (example: browser lockdowns to dynamic passwords).

We love Edulastic because it’s one of the best online assessments tools that prepares students for the year-end standardized testing that awaits them all. They offer free and customizable questions from actual released standardized tests, such as PARCC, ISTEP, MCA, PSSA, MAAP, NC EOG, and others.

Another great thing about Edulastic is that it’s completely free to use. This includes: 

• Unlimited assessments & students;
• 38,000+ question bank;
• 50+ technology-enhanced item types;
• Auto-graded questions;
• Google Classroom sync;
• Co-teacher access;
• Virtual lesson builder;

However, for $100 per year, you can get a lot of additional benefits and functionalities.

Edpuzzle is one of the most innovative online assessment platforms designed for video lectures, but it’s a lot more than just an assessment platform. It allows teachers to easily and very intuitively create interactive video lessons for students of all ages. Teachers can then directly embed these videos in their LMS platform, such as Moodle.

Within the videos, teachers can integrate questions for students to track whether they’re paying attention and understanding the content material. These answers can be closed (yes/no, multiple-choice questions, wiring missing words, etc.), open (writing their own responses), or can even involve drawing, embedding images, or uploading an audio response (to record audio as an answer).

This is an amazing way for teachers to break down long videos, engage students during video lectures, and assert the understanding of each student through the answers.

Edpuzzle’s basic version is completely free while the Pro Teacher version is only $12.50 per month and there’s also a possibility for a custom plan for schools and districts.

PollEverywhere

Poll Everywhere is a very simple, yet very useful online tool that offers exactly what their name says - the ability to embed polls everywhere. Whether we’re talking about live online classes, video lectures, LMS platforms, or other virtual environments, PollEverywhere is a great way to engage your audience and assess your work. 

Thanks to PollEverywhere, teachers can add surveys, Q&As, quizzes, word clouds, and types of polls in their lectures. PollEverywhere for education offers two distinct plans - one for K-12 students and another for universities. This includes formative assignments, writing answers for an anonymous discussion, or engaging in animated word clouds or classroom voting for the youngest.

We love PollEverywhere because it’s a very simple product that allows teachers to write questions in real-time, collect responses from students in the moment, and then discuss the results during the lecture itself.

The pricing structure for PollEverywhere is very inclusive and flexible as there are five different plans - from a completely free version to a paid version for large teams that’s $84 per month. There’s also an Enterprise plan for organizations for which you can request an offer.

Slido is another product for engaging online audiences with live polls, quizzes, or Q&As. Their solution for education is used by Stanford University, Berkeley, UCL, and the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Slido’s solution is trusted by some of the world’s best universities because of its easy and clean user interface as well as the useful features and functionalities it offers. With Silo teachers will get:

• Quick formative assessment activities;
• Real-time polls and quizzes;
• Anonymous or account-based question-asking functionality (gives students the ability to ask questions anonymously);
• Feedback collection;
• Crowdsourcing students’ questions during lectures;
• Integrations with other tools (example: Microsoft Teams; Google Slides; Power Point, etc).

Just as the tools we’ve already covered, Slido offers a completely free basic version for up to 100 participants, and three other paid plans of €10 (Engage), €50 (Professional), and €150 (Enterprise) per month.

EasyTestMaker

The name of this online assessment platform gives it all away. EasyTestMaker is a tool teachers can use to create, print, or publish online their tests easily!

We and many other teachers love EasyTestMaker because it cuts the manual labor significantly by automatically formatting and organizing the questions for the test. Plus, as opposed to some other similar tools, it allows teachers to either upload online or print the tests for offline use.

With the EasyTestMaker you can create different types of test questions, including multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, matching, short answer, and true or false questions with just a few clicks. You also have the option to create a bank of questions and give different users a random set of questions - this is extremely useful for tests that repeat each year as well as tests for different classes. Another similar functionality is alternative versions of the same test for preventing cheating.

Finally, EasyTestMaker also comes with a question analysis reporting feature that teachers can use to see how many test-takers answered, what’s the percentage of right and wrong answers for each question, and so on.

The pricing structure is composed of three plans - Free, Plus ($59.95/year), and Premium ($79.95/year). 

Zoho Challenge

Zoho is a powerful suite of software for business management that provides many different solutions, including a complete CRM platform for which the company is most famous. 

However, the Zoho Challenge is their product for education, and as a powerful online assessment platform, it allows educators to assess the knowledge of their learners through interactive quizzes.

In other words, Zoho Challenge is a quiz builder with many interesting functionalities. For instance, it allows teachers to create questions (or require responses) with images, audio, text, drawings, and so on. Each quiz you create is unique because there’s also a variety of assessment and question types (single choice, multiple-choice, fill the blank, notes, descriptive, etc). And, depending on the students’ answers, teachers can create customized feedback for each student.

For each quiz, teachers can also customize a variety of settings, such as choosing to set a passing score, allowed attempts, quiz time, randomized order, correct answer reveal, or un/restricted navigation.

There are three pricing plans for Zoho Challenge - Free, Express (€1 per user per month), and Professional (€3 per user per month).

ASSISTments (math platform)

ASSISTments might not be for all, but it’s an absolute must-have for math teachers. The platform is a completely free educational tool developed by educators, learning scientists, and software engineers. Their goal is to improve students’ learning experiences online through interactive technology.

Because of this, they offer high-quality learning resources, formative assessment features, and practice state tests, all for free.

All you need to do is make an account to explore the massive content library for students of all ages. And, when you find assignments that work for your students, you can filter them by class, status, due date, or release date. This makes it very easy for teachers to organize and track everything. 

Kahoot is one of the most fun, speed-based online assessment tools for students of all ages. Schools and even universities use it to gamify the learning process and make long lectures a lot easier to handle.

But, that’s not all Kahoot is used for. Teachers can create “kahoots” or quizzes to review students' knowledge either for formative assessment, or simply as a fun revision method before each class.

We love Kahoot because, besides its game-like design, it’s applicable to any subject, any topic, in any language, and on any device. Teachers and students have the absolute freedom to create some awesome learning quizzes that won’t feel like formal assessments at all. This works extremely well for students who suffer from performance anxiety and are very stressed during the exam period.

Kahoot can be used for free, but with some limitations like allowing 50 students per quiz. However, there are also three paid plans for individuals - Pro (€3 per teacher per month), Premium (€6 per teacher per month), and Premium Plus (€9 per teacher per month) - and one customizable plan for schools and districts.

Explain Everything

Explain Everything is a digital whiteboard where teachers can draw, add animated elements, and develop a fun and visual tutorial for their lectures to make sure everyone understands everything. Moreover, Explain Everything gives teachers the possibility to truly take their lectures to a whole other level by assigning activities and tasks within their presentations.

Explain Everything is one of the most unique tools for online learning, which is why we absolutely love it, but when talking about online assessment platforms, it shines with their features for formative assessment.

This means that students can create and share their whiteboards, too, as a response to an assignment, individually or as a collaborative group project. Teachers can visually see how students think and how they perceive the topic, and give unique feedback through the whiteboard as well.

Another benefit is that Explain Everything fully integrates with some of the most popular LMS platforms, such as Moodle, Google Classroom, Canvas, and others.

The pricing structure is similar to most learning platforms. It offers a limited free version, and two other plans with a lot more features and functionalities - Teacher (€34.99 per user, per year) and School (€150 one teacher, +30 students).

Teachers who are familiar with and believe in the gamification theory for education will absolutely love Gimkit - a learning platform that can be cheekily described as Kahoot on steroids.

In fact, the Gimkit team describes their platform as a game show for the classroom, which was designed by a high-school student who wanted a solution to keep them engaged in school.

However, unlike Kahoot, Gimkit users can answer questions on their own devices at their own pace without a time restriction for answers. All the questions are part of a “Kit” on a specific topic and the platform randomizes the order and frequency, allowing students to be exposed to one question more than once. This is a good way to add repetition for knowledge consolidation.

Probably the most interesting thing about Gimkit is that students can receive in-app “cash” (points) that they can use to purchase upgrades and power-ups, while wrong answers take away cashpoints.

Teachers can also assign GimKit as homework because some of the game mods and assignments can be graded automatically and produce a report for every student.

Flipgrid is another learning platform from the future. With a very simple design and a goal to promote social learning, Flipgrid gives students an opportunity to express their creativity and share video responses to assignments or questions.

Teachers can create video lectures (video assignments) or share text assignments and ask for video responses. Students will then be expected to record themselves or create a video tutorial with their own audio as an answer. In fact, there are no limits as to how students respond as long as it is in a video format.

We love the focus on videos because of two things. First, it’s the closest thing to an in-person class because the teachers can see the students’ body language, their expressions, their hesitation, whether they’re comfortable, and so on. Second, it prevents cheating because students will have to record themselves answering. 

On top of all that, Flipgrid is completely free and unlimited for all teachers and students!

Google Classroom Question Tool (and Google Forms)

Google Classroom is another widely popular LMS (learning management system) for educational institutions that follow a blended learning methodology. And, since it’s free and developed by Google, it’s not a surprise that most educational institutions are using it.

And, while there are incredibly advanced features for online assessments in Google Classrooms, such as the plagiarism reports, let’s focus on the Question Tool. The Question Tool in Google Classroom is a simple, yet very helpful tool for online assessments. Teachers can create questions and assignments for a quick formative assessment or to get feedback from students.

The answers are in a form-like style and there’s an option for students to see and reply to each other's responses (or not).

Therefore, if you’re using Google Classroom or thinking of using it, the Question Tool, as well as Google Forms are great options for online assessment.

Mentimeter is a Swedish company that has developed an online tool for creating presentations with real-time feedback. In other words, they believed in making presentations as assessment tools for education, businesses, or other private events.

Their solution for education offers teachers the possibility to test students’ knowledge, start discussions, and gather valuable feedback on a specific topic.

When teachers create presentations, they can use live-polling or survey features that students can gain access to through the Mentimeter app. There’s also the possibility of creating quiz competitions with colorful animations and a suspense-building leaderboard.

Best of all, teachers won’t have to go through the trouble of creating a fun and engaging presentation from scratch as Mentrimeter has an elaborate template library for different topics as well as many for formative assessment assignments.

Following the example of its competitors, Mentimeter offers a free version of the app with limited features, and three other pricing plans for those who really enjoy it - Basic ($11.99/month), Pro ($24.99/month), and Enterprise (custom price per request).

Crowdsignal

Crowdsignal is another survey app that can be used by teachers as a valuable online assessment tool. It’s just like Google Forms, but offers a lot more.

Crowdsignal is a surprisingly powerful tool that allows users to collect and export data everywhere, including in emails and other LMSs (learning management systems).

Here are some of the features that set Crowdsignal apart from its competition:

• Fast and very intuitive editing (no need for coding);
• Extremely versatile - supports surveys, forms, quizzes, and polls and 41 different question and form types (multiple-choice, free type, and Likert scales, etc.);
• Custom styles to match the theme of your lectures;
• Sharing possibilities - you can embed the form everywhere, such as your website, email, LMSs, in Zoom meetings, and more;
• Deep data analysis - you can see the results in real-time, but also create filters for data analysis and see it through beautiful visualizations.
• Versatile export options - you can export your data in any format (excel, pdf, etc).

All of this is available for free in a limited format. Then, depending on your needs, you choose between three pricing plans - Premium ($15 per month), Business ($45 per month), and Team ($29 per user per month). 

Students regularly use flashcards when they’re learning because they’re a quick, fun, and effective self-assessment tool. And with Quizlet, teachers can also use the same method to assess students' knowledge. Here’s how it works.

As an online assessment platform, Quizlet uses flashcards and an AI Learning Assistant to help students get a grip of their most challenging subjects. Teachers can create a set of flashcards, folders with different flashcards, or a class with many subject topics and different sets of cards. Then, they can share their cards with the class and track how much students understand the material.

And while Quizlet is still an amazing tool for self-assessment, Quizlet Pro (€31.99/year) for teachers comes with many added features and functionalities. Some of these features include:

• Creating custom flashcards with the option to ask multiple-choice or open questions;
• Tracking  students performance through Quizlet analytics;
• Using Quizlet Live for a quick assessment during the lecture;
• Creating detailed diagrams and other drawings on the flashcards to better explain the material;
• Using expert explanations from 10,000 certified textbooks as a way to decrease your workload.

Pear Deck is an add-on and a web-based application designed to make Google Slides (Presentations) a lot more engaging by adding formative assessments and interactive questions.

The platform is very similar to Mentimeter, but its focus is more narrow - it’s meant for Google Slides and works perfectly for it. Therefore, if you’re using Google Slides to create presentations, you don’t have to buy separate applications of software, you can just integrate Pear Deck into Google’s workspace.

To use it, you only have to click on Add-ons on the upper toolbar while in Google Sliders and select “Open Pear Deck Sidebar”... that’s it. On the side, you’ll see all the functionalities and features this add-on offers.

More specifically, you’ll be able to drag and drop formative assessments with just one click, thanks to their template library. Think of bell ringers, checks for understanding, exit tickets, and more. However, you can also create your own custom questions. Some of the responses that Pear Deck support include: text, number response, multiple-choice, web slide, and drawing or dragging in the upgraded version.

The upgraded version of Peak Deck costs $149.99/yr, while the basic plan is completely free. You also have the option for an Enterprise plan tailored for your school or district for a custom price.

Similar to Moodle, Seesaw is a learning platform that connects teachers, students, and parents together.

It works in a very unique way by allowing students to create a digital portfolio of their work. For example, all the assignments, questions, tests, videos, drawings, recordings, and other work the students do is saved in their digital portfolio that teachers and parents have access to. 

Moreover, teachers can gain valuable insights through all the stages of the students’ learning journey and see how they progress.

As you can see, Seesaw is, in a way, an educational social platform or an educational community to which only parents, students, and teachers have access.

Depending on which product you choose (example: Seesaw for schools or Seesaw for training), there are different prices. You can check their full pricing structure here.

Discovery Education

Discovery Education is yet another powerful learning platform for science, social studies, STEM, and coding, that also offers a lot of formative assessment tools.

With Discovery Education, teachers can engage all students through breath-taking content curated by virtual field trips made by professionals. It features videos, text, podcasts, interactives, and behind-the-scenes at major organizations, career spotlights, and more.

And, when it comes to formative assessments, teachers can create interactive quizzes inside the lectures or as a separate assignment and track each student’s progress. Discovery Education already has ready-to-use activities for all of their lectures, but teachers can customize everything and add their own touch if they like.

Discovery Education also gives teachers access to their large network of professionals and educators worldwide.

Some of the lectures on Discovery Educations are free for students, but to get most of their assessment features, you have to be subject to their school pricing plans - Elementary & Middle School ($2,600 per school per year) or High School ($3,100 per school per year).

Last but not least, let’s talk about Zoom. 

Zoom is not an online assessment tool, but it has become the staple of online classrooms, meetings, lectures, and more. Teachers all around the world gather students and organize their classes via Zoom. Therefore, one might wonder, “Can we also use Zoom to assess students’ knowledge?”

In a very limited form, yes we can. Zoom supports file sharing and screen sharing - two features that are usually used for monitoring students while they complete their exams online.

For instance, teachers can share the test through Zoom or share a link to a software, while all students must share their screen and leave their mic on. It’s not a perfect solution, but surprisingly it works very well and teachers love it because they’re already comfortable with Zoom.

Therefore, if you have limited resources or can't use other online assessment tools for any reason, you can still get a lot out of Zoom and provide a somewhat smooth testing experience. 

And, let’s not forget that Zoom also gives teachers the ability to create polls for gathering quick feedback during lessons. Check out the following video on how to use Zoom for conducting formative assessments in an e-classroom.

How to Use Zoom Polls for Formative Assessment in the E-Classroom

Teaching online has its challenges no doubt, but with the right online assessment platforms and other digital tools, the whole process can be a lot easier than it seems. The only thing is that it might take a little time for everyone to get familiar with the tools and become comfortable using them. Other than that, the use of digital tools for assessments in education is a true game-changer that significantly decreases teachers’ workload.

Most of the online assessment tools in this list are incredibly popular and easy, which makes the learning curve less steep. On top of that, children nowadays grow up with technology in their hands, so chances are they’ll find the tools incredibly intuitive and comfortable.

Since all of the tools offer free trials or have free versions, you can easily try them out before choosing the one(s) that suit(s) you best.

At Inspired Instruction, we work hard to empower the teaching community and provide educators with valuable resources, tools, and techniques. This is why we regularly update our blog with new content on trending topics within the industry. So, if you liked this guide, check out our blog and subscribe to get the newest information.

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