Atomic Assessments - Creating Assignments in Canvas [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.

This document outlines how to create assignments with Atomic Assessments.
 

Creating assignments

Instructors can create an Atomic Assessments assignment by clicking in the Atomic Assessments link in the left navigation menu of a Canvas course. Once created and published in Atomic Assessments, the assignment will automatically appear for students when they click on Assignments in the course's left navigation menu. Instructors can edit assignments through the Atomic Assessments link in the navigation bar. Students do not see the Atomic Assessments menu item in the left navigation menu.

To create an Atomic Assessments assignment:

  1. Click Atomic Assessments in the left navigation menu of your Canvas course.
    Atomic Assessments link in navigation bar
  2. Once in Atomic Assessments, click the New Assignment button in the top right corner.
    New assignment button
  3. A New Assignment window opens. Click the Start with a new activity button to create a brand new activity.
    • If you would like to build your new activity off of an existing activity (essentially making a copy), click the Start from an existing activity button and select the existing activity to use.
  4. In the Assignment name field, type the assignment name, then click the Create Assignment button. Make sure to set the title of the assignment to something that clearly and concisely identifies the assignment.
    new assignment
  5. Configure the assignment settings. For details see Atomic Assessments - Determining Assignment Settings [UW-Madison].
  6. After setting the assignment settings, click the Save button.

Creating items

Items can contain single questions, multiple questions, or other features.

To create a new Atomic Assessment item:

  1. Click on the Items tab, then click the + Create item button to create a new item or use the + Find items button to add items that you have already created. You can also add page breaks in between items by clicking the + Page break button, which will put the items you create on separate pages in the assignment.
    Create Item button
  2. Enter a title for the item in the Title field by clicking on the "Say something about this item" text. Make sure to name items in a way that will make them easy for you to find later as you can re-use items across different activities.
    Say something about this item
  3. Click + Add new to add a new question to the item.
    Add new
  4. Select the type of question or feature you want to add to this item. Use the menu on the left to click into the different categories of question types (Multiple Choice, Math, Chemistry, etc.), then click the corresponding box on the right to add a question of this type.
  5. Complete the question or fill out the feature specific options. Refer to Learnosity's documentation for details on how to create each question type:
  6. Please note that although Atomic Assessments allows for the creation of custom question types, Learn@UW-Madison is not able to support question types outside of the standard question types listed in Learnosity's documentation.
  7. Repeat this process to add additional questions and features to an item.
  8. Click the Save button in the upper-right corner to save each item as you create it.

Publishing assignments

  1. Click on Atomic Assessments in the left navigation bar of your Canvas course to view a list of the assignments you've created.
  2. Click on the circle "crossout" icon to the far right of an assignment. The icon will turn into a green circle with a white checkmark in it. This means the assignment is published and can be found by students when they visit the Canvas Assignments.
    Publish

Deleting assignments

  1. Click on Atomic Assessments in the left navigation bar of your Canvas course to view a list of the assignments you've created.
  2. For the assignment you want to delete, click on the kebab menu (the three dots).
  3. Click Delete in the drop-down menu to delete the assignment.
    delete

Previewing assignments

You can use the Atomic Assessments "Preview" functionality to preview assignments. You can also use the Canvas "Student View" to preview how the quiz will look for students.

  1. Click on Atomic Assessmentsn in the left navigation bar of your Canvas course to view a list of the assignments you've created.
  2. Click on the name of the assignment you want to preview.
  3. In the upper right, click the eye icon to preview the assignment.
    eye icon

If the quiz is published, you can also use the Canvas Student View functionality to see what the quiz looks like to your students. After publishing the assignment, navigate to your course home page. On the right side of the screen, click the right navigation, click the Student View button. Once in Student View, click on Assignments in the left hand navigation bar. Click on the name of the assignment to preview as a student.

Creating and editing tags

Tags are useful for organizing items and questions based on learning objectives, which in turn can help you ensure students are achieving specific learning outcomes. Tags can be scoped to each course and you can manage tags in Atomic Assessments. Follow the steps below to create and edit tags in your assignments.

  1. Click Atomic Assessments in the left navigation menu of your Canvas course.
    Atomic Assessments link in navigation bar
  2. Click on the Item Bank.
    Item Bank from the upper left menu
  3. Within this tag menu, you can create tags under:
    1. Level 1 - 3 tags
      • Type in your tag and hit enter to save the tag
    2. Add additional tag types
      • In the Tag type window type in your tag and hit enter to save the tag.
    Add Tag Type Name