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Atomic Assessments - Overview [UW-Madison]
Atomic Assessments is an advanced quizzing tool currently available through Canvas to all of UW-Madison's for-credit instructors. Because it is an advanced quizzing tool, it is recommend for technically advanced instructors or instructors with departmental support staff. Please leave ample time to develop and test assessments in Atomic Assessments before incorporating them into your live courses.
Select this link to list all Atomic Assessments documents from the Learn@UW-Madison Knowledgebase at the bottom of this page.
What is Atomic Assessments?
Atomic Assessments is an advanced quizzing tool that allows instructors to develop and deliver sophisticated quizzes directly in Canvas. Atomic Assessments is built on the Learnosity assessment platform.
Please see DoIT’s Atomic Assessments IT Service Page for a more detailed description of Atomic Assessments.
Tool Functionality Details
Basic Functionality
- To Create an Atomic Assessment, you simply select the Atomic Assessments link in the Canvas Navigation Bar and then select New Assignment.
- There, you are guided through the creation process of the assignment including Determining the Settings of the Assessment.
- After the assignment settings are done, you will then add items to the assignment.
- Once items have been added, you can then preview the assignment to see what the students will see.
Advanced Functionality
- Inside the item settings, you can upload a data table. This table is a comma separated list of values.
- You can then use those values to create multiple questions and answers using just one item.
- You can put multiple questions inside the same item, which will allow instructors to have values to be carried forward into successive questions.
Use Cases
- The College of Engineering uses Atomic Assessments to leverage the advanced quizzing options available. This includes the various question types as well as the data table feature. The data table allows for them to create one question and then have multiple answers. It also allows them to chain questions together allowing them to have items that build off of each other.
Getting Started
See Atomic Assessments - Getting Started [UW-Madison] for details on how to begin with Atomic Assessments.
Additional Resources
- UW-Madison Knowledgebase
- Getting Started with Atomic Assessments
- Atomic Assessments - Accessibility & Usability Guide for Instructors
- Atomic Assessments - Is Atomic Assessments for me?
- Atomic Assessments - Enabling Atomic Assessments in Canvas
- Atomic Assessments - Creating Assignments in Canvas
- Atomic Assessments - Determining Assignment Settings
- Atomic Assessments - Grading Assignments
- Atomic Assessments - Reports and Downloading Student Responses
- Canvas - Student Tech Modules in Canvas Commons
- Getting Started with Atomic Assessments
- Vendor
- UW-Madison KnowledgeBase Atomic Assessments documents - UW-Madison documentation on Atomic Assessments.
- UW-Madison Academic Technology - Atomic Assessments known issues
- Canvas Tech Modules
- These modules, developed by DoIT Academic Technology's Learn@UW-Madison team, are designed to help instructors introduce centrally supported learning technologies to their students. For more information, see Canvas - Student Tech Modules in Canvas Commons
- The Atomic Assessments Student Tech Module may be found on Canvas Commons.