David Jones – Innovation Blog

Adjusting Assessment Scores: Why and How

When it comes to grading, scores are often reported on a simple 0-100 scale. But, in many cases, it’s better to adjust those scores to make sure they truly reflect how well a student has mastered the material. This adjustment process is often referred to as normalization, and one common way to do this is through a method called z-score standardization.

What is Z-Score Standardization?

Imagine a group of students who took the same test. Some students might have performed really well, while others might have struggled. If we simply average all the scores and compare them to a fixed passing threshold (like 70%), it wouldn’t be fair to those students who performed well beyond the average. Z-score standardization is a way of adjusting scores so that they fit a more accurate and fair scale.

How it works:

Z-Score Calculation: The z-score tells us how far a student’s score is from the average score, measured in terms of standard deviations (which is a fancy way of saying how spread out the scores are). A positive z-score means the student did better than average, and a negative z-score means the student did worse than average.

The formula for calculating a z-score is:

Adjusting Scores: Once we calculate each student’s z-score, we can adjust their scores to match a more standard scale. This is done by applying the z-score to the mean (average) and standard deviation of the group’s scores. The new score is calculated as:

This formula uses the student’s z-score to adjust the score based on how far it is from the group’s average.

Why Do This?

Fairer Grading: By adjusting for how scores are distributed (e.g., a test with a very easy or very hard question), the scores become fairer, especially when comparing students across different groups or assessments.
Removing Bias: Sometimes, individual test questions are biased or poorly written, affecting how students perform. Z-score standardization helps eliminate that bias by focusing on the overall performance of the group.
Outlier Handling: The method also takes into account “outliers” (e.g., one or two students who either do extremely well or very poorly). These outliers can skew results, so they’re filtered out to make the adjusted scores more reliable.

What Does This Look Like in Practice?

Let’s say a student scores a 90 on a test, but the average score for the class is 75, with a standard deviation of 10. To calculate the z-score for the student, we use the formula:

This means the student’s score is 1.5 standard deviations above the class average.

Next, we use the z-score to adjust the student’s score. If we want to bring the class to a higher standard (let’s say the target mean is 80), we use the formula for adjusting the score:

So, the student’s adjusted score is now 95, reflecting their performance in relation to the class and the new target.

Z-score standardization is often mistaken for “curving” scores, but they are fundamentally different. Curving typically involves adjusting all scores on a test so that the highest score becomes a perfect score, or the average score is raised to a certain target (like 70%). This method can unfairly benefit some students and disadvantage others. In contrast, z-score standardization adjusts individual scores based on how far they are from the class average, ensuring that each student’s performance is evaluated relative to the entire group, not a fixed threshold. By considering the spread of scores (standard deviation) and handling outliers, z-score standardization provides a more accurate reflection of a student’s performance, removing the arbitrary nature of curving and offering a fairer and more statistically sound approach to grading.

Innovation makes it incredibly easy for teachers to adjust and standardize assessment scores with our powerful, user-friendly tool. By using z-score standardization, our app helps teachers fairly align scores to a standard scale, taking into account the unique distribution of each class’s performance. With automatic outlier detection and score adjustments, teachers no longer need to worry about arbitrary curving or biased grading. It’s an efficient, data-driven solution that ensures every student’s performance is evaluated accurately and equitably, all with minimal effort on the teacher’s part.

Rediscovering the French Dictée

When I was in ninth grade, we had a large world language (then “foreign” language) department at my high school. My homeroom classmate had an older teacher for French I and I had her daughter for my teacher. For some reason, I recall a conversation about a dictation exercise, the dictée, that the older teacher (who was from France) regularly did. My teacher didn’t do dictées. My homeroom classmate was not too keen on them. That was the first time I heard of the dictée.

I couldn’t tell you why I remember that little homeroom conversation. But I never did have a dictée in any French class right up through my BA degree in French Language and Literature. The dictée had become old fashioned. Its emphasis on correct grammar and spelling were shoved aside as too rigid in the “notional-functional” approach that was growing in the early ’80s and which came to replace grammar-translation.

The dictée returned to my attention last fall when I read an article in FranceInfo about a dictée contest. In fact, such “concours” are pretty common now and the dictée, that classic French pedagogical tool, has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity.

Scroll ahead some months and I find myself teaching a student in French V for an online school. The student is brilliant and already fluent in French, so I am challenged to devise lessons for him when my usual stock of lessons fall within his mastery or when the grammatical studies in the syllabus provided by the school are things he easily tests out of. I asked him what he thought he needed to work on instead, and he said spelling. The dictée sprung to mind as a spelling activity.

Concurrently, I am teaching an AP French course through another company. It’s a small class of eight very bright students who are a pleasure to teach. Unfortunately, they have gotten into the habit of relying heavily on AI to generate their work. Even in improvised, spontaneous chat assignments, some of them repeatedly leave the page (the Innovation synchronous chat app tracks this) to no doubt consult the AI as to what to say. The work many of them submit is polished and perfect beyond their years. Language learning involves detecting common errors and refining the language. But if the students never reveal their errors or lack of knowledge, I cannot easily correct. It feels like an arms race to continually devise activities that are resistant to AI assistance. The dictée sprung to mind as a virtual classroom task that would be difficult to get AI help on.

Since I began teaching French (1990!), I have used composition assignments to look for errors to work on with students. These are assignments modeled on the New York State proficiency test and Regents exams of the era. They measure each clause by comprehensibility, appropriateness, and form. Students have a free error allowance (one for French III and up). These assignments were done in class under supervision with no references (although for classes needing extra support I could allow a certain number of questions). When I began teaching online, I wanted to use this assignment as I had. I coded a World Language App here at Innovation that provides a digital space for students with a proctor and an easy scoring page for teachers. A large percentage of my students use AI extensively to generate these even though I ask them not to. They present polished work that I know they could not have written themselves. One student I had actually created a few errors on purpose to cover the AI consultation. They were random and not the kind of natural “errors” that naturally occur. I don’t make a big deal. I rarely even let on that I know. Some students use AI less as the course goes on when they learn to feel comfortable. I contented myself with turning the perfect compositions into an exercise: I could ask students about what they wrote, the tense they chose, or just offer grammatical descriptions of the work. It was interesting watching them explain the presence of complex structures that they had not been taught yet! 🙂

The Dictée gives me important information about student proficiency and direction for lessons

I tried out a dictée with three students this week, French II, III, and V. I used the Innovation short answer digital learning space in two ways: I did one lesson “live” during our session and one was a recording I made for homework. I was pleased with the results. I learned a lot more about my students’ language abilities than from the weekly composition assignment.

My purpose is to discover student errors so we can correct them and polish them. The errors fall into two categories, lexical (spelling) and grammatical (conjugation and agreement, etc.). But I also learned that the dictée can reveal something about students’ vocabulary knowledge too. Words they do not know they are likely to skip or render phonetically. My guess is that native speakers would do a better job rendering unknown words spelled correctly because they are more familiar with the writing-phonology system of French.

I was happy enough with the results to modify the composition app to allow attaching an audio clip and a model answer. I worked with ChatGTP myself a little to code a function that would quickly assess the students’ spelling. This app is easy to use during synchronous sessions: I merely generate a link from the course playlist, the student saves their dictation, and then on submission I can display on a shared screen to debrief. I can also assign these for homework.

The student’s digital space for submitting dictée.

The scoring page where teachers can highlight errors with different colors for lexical errors and grammatical errors.

Valuable Information about Student Skill Levels

Since it is difficult and unlikely that students will have the time and opportunity to check this with an AI, I get valuable and authentic data about student skill levels. Namely, their lexical spelling, grammatical knowledge, and a good picture of their vocabulary. Research has shown that dictation can indirectly reflect a student’s vocabulary knowledge, since a richer vocabulary base enables more accurate transcription of spoken language. Currently, in remote teaching contexts it is difficult to get this information. Students at all levels are becoming adept at AI queries. They polish and submit work that defeats the purpose of assigning it!

The debriefing on the task is as important as getting the information about student skill levels. Reviewing the corrections and creating custom exercises to train students out of the errors or teach them the grammar structures and vocabulary they need: these are necessary to fully profit by the task.

The senior teacher in my high school, all those years ago, who maintained the tradition of the dictée would smile now, I suspect, to find that some of us are returning to that ancient practice. Keep an eye on the Innovation app that assesses dictés! I plan to refine it as I use the activity more and more.

Activity Store Terms of Purchase

Effective Date: 7 January 2025

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Terms and Conditions for PDF Purchases

4 January 2025

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Account Registration: To make purchases, you must register for an account on our platform. Your account information will be used to manage your purchases and provide access to downloadable content.

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Download Link: After completing your purchase, a download link for the purchased PDF file(s) will be displayed on your screen. The link will also be saved in the “Imports and Purchases” section of your account dashboard for future access.

Limited-Time Availability: Download links will remain active for [e.g., 7 days] after the purchase date. Please download your files within this period. Extensions may be granted at the discretion of the store administrators upon request.

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Updates and Changes: We reserve the right to update, modify, or remove PDF content at any time without prior notice. Updated versions of a purchased PDF may not be automatically available unless explicitly stated.

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Intended Use: Purchased materials are intended for personal or educational use only. Redistribution, resale, or unauthorized sharing of downloaded files is strictly prohibited.

No Refunds: Due to the nature of digital products, refunds or exchanges are not provided once a purchase has been completed and the download link displayed.

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Technical Issues: We are not responsible for technical issues, such as incompatible software or hardware, that prevent you from using downloaded files. Ensure your system has the necessary tools to open and view PDF files.

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Accuracy and Quality: While we strive to ensure the accuracy and quality of our PDF materials, we do not guarantee that every document will meet all user expectations.

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Using Innovation’s Moderated Synchronous Chat

This year, I am enjoying teaching French remotely, both one-on-one and in whole group configurations. In a whole group situation, encouraging engagement is important and synchronous chat is a great way to do this.

Most video conferencing apps like Zoom and Teams have chat features. But I don’t like using this for instruction for a variety of reasons. I need something that provides structured synchronous remote conversations in an environment that I can moderate, monitor, and record for possible later assessment. The Innovation synchronous chat is like a chat breakout room for education. Read more about the theoretical underpinnings of this app.

Permit me to describe how to use this handy educational app.

Step 1: Create a New Chat

First, the instructor creates a new chat. Select the course in which playlist you wish to post the chat. Click any of the green plus-sign buttons to add a new task. From the top, select “Chats”.

Now you can set up your new chat with a title and optional accessories. “Accessories” are additional elements that your assignment may need, such as a PDF document, a video, or just a simple description.

When you create the task, it places the link in the course playlist just like any other task. It will be listed as a “forum” type task and, while it can be viewed in form format, it will be a chat. Read more here about asynchronous discussion forums. When you are ready to use it, click on the link to start the host teacher session.

The Host Controls

Your teacher’s host controls are on the right. “Live Link” creates a URL that you can send to students so they can join the session. You can, for example, post this in the video conferencing app chat or in an email.

Another way students can join is by logging in to their Innovation dashboard, navigating to the course where the link is posted, and clicking on the link to the chat. Students cannot use the chat session if there is no teacher host. Teachers can hide links in the playlist for a course as needed.

There must be at least two students for the app to proceed.

My preference is to start up the chat and then copy the live link URL and paste it into the video conferencing chat so students can join easily without searching for a link.

As students join, their names appear in the participants list on the lower right.

Conducting a Chat

Once your students have joined, click on the “Assign Partners” button control. This will randomly and anonymously assign students to a chat partner (if there is an odd number of students, one group of 3 is created).

Now that partners have been assigned, you will see each team listed in the column to the right. Teams are nicknamed by world cities. You can click on these any time to view the current chat. You can share this screen so you can conduct instruction while chats are going on and share with the class anonymously what students are chatting about.

The chats need to be started. You can optionally set a timer to end the sessions after a certain number of minutes.

Students now have full functionality to conduct their assigned chat.

When the Session is Completed

Once the session is completed or is to be paused, you click the Disable Chat button. Now you can move to Debriefing Mode if you wish to display a shared screen with each teams chats and offer advice and commentary or discussion.

Other Features

Scoring Mode

Scoring mode is for the teacher. In scoring mode, you can assess students’ participation using a built-in rubric. Just click the team name to view the chat and the form for grading the chat. The rubric’s dimensions are quality, etiquette, appropriateness, and form. You can save the score. You can also just score it manually.

You may also find it useful to view the chat in a forum format. This is good for lengthier discussions with longer post sizes. You can grade the work here as well.

Viewing in forum mode lets you grade it based on other installed rubrics such as those for online discussion.

What if a student joins after we have started?

Students who join after the chat has been are automatically assigned to one of the other groups.

What if we want to resume the chats?

If the teacher enables chat again after a stop, the teams are the same and the chat picks up where it left off.

This app empowers teachers to foster meaningful interactions in a structured, remote environment while maintaining control and oversight. Its flexibility allows for dynamic group work, individual assessment, and real-time engagement—all tailored to the needs of modern educators and learners. By integrating tools like these, educators can enhance the depth and quality of online instruction, creating opportunities for collaboration that rival, and often surpass, traditional classroom experiences.

Announcing: The New “Activity Shop” and “PowerPoint Shop”

When I took up my first full-time job teaching at a small, rural school in 1991, I inherited a vast trove of teaching materials from the former instructor. A lot of it I pitched (some was dated from the 60s!) but some I kept and was grateful to have.

So, I’m retired. But what about all my stuff? Well, dear web-site-visitor, here is my stuff! I would like to invite you into my virtual classroom archives, kind of like a virtual garage sale. There are two shops here I hope you will browse to find many valuable purchases: one features online learning activities from my recent and current online courses (I continue to teach part-time in retirement) and the other shop features my old PowerPoint slide shows. Some of them date back 25 years, if you can believe it!

You need to be a subscriber to buy from either shop. The annual fee to subscribe to Innovation is extremely reasonable! Your purchases are saved to your account, your virtual classroom, in a course your students cannot see that is called “Purchases and Imports”.

The Innovation Activity Shop

Log in and shop across my recent and current courses for teaching world history, US history, and French levels I through AP French and even French V!

As you browse, you can preview items you might like. Click for pricing details to see what the activity contains (questions, images, audio, etc.). Checkout when you are ready and when you’re entering credit card data, don’t forget to enter a coupon or promo code you may have come across!

Upon transaction completion, the activities are copied from my class to yours in Innovation. You will find them in a class called Purchases and Imports.

The Innovation PowerPoint Shop

Log in to make purchases here too. These are downloads of PPTX files of all different sizes and on many different themes. I have taught French all levels, social studies middle and high school, and even computer science courses. At this writing, the shop already has over 300 PowerPoints and I have not even uploaded them all yet!

Once your purchase is complete, you will get links to download each file you purchased. The links also are posted to your own virtual classroom here at Innovation, that class called Purchases and Imports.

For both shops, be mindful please of the terms and conditions.

Terms and Conditions for PowerPoint (PPTX) Purchases

1 January 2025

Registration

Account Registration: You must register for an account on our platform to make purchases. Your account information will be used to manage your purchases and provide access to downloadable content.

Purchasing and Downloading

Download Link: After completing your purchase, a download link for the purchased PowerPoint file(s) will be displayed on your screen. The link will also be saved to the “Imports and Purchases” section of your account dashboard for future access.
Limited-Time Availability: Download links will remain active for [e.g., 7 days] after the purchase date. Ensure you download your files within this period. Extensions may be granted at the discretion of the store administrators upon request.

Content Updates

Updates and Changes: We reserve the right to update, modify, or remove slideshows at any time without prior notice. Updated versions of a purchased slideshow may not be automatically available unless explicitly stated.

Usage and Restrictions

Intended Use: Purchased materials are intended for personal or educational use only. Redistribution, resale, or unauthorized sharing of downloaded files is strictly prohibited.
No Refunds: Due to the nature of digital products, refunds or exchanges are not provided once a purchase has been completed and the download link displayed.

Responsibility

Technical Issues: We are not responsible for technical issues, such as incompatible software or hardware, that prevent you from using downloaded files. Ensure your system meets the necessary requirements to open and use PowerPoint (.pptx) files.
Account Security: You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password and for all activities under your account.

Disclaimers

Accuracy and Quality: While we strive to ensure the accuracy and quality of our slideshows, we do not guarantee that every presentation will meet all user expectations.
Liability: We are not liable for any direct or indirect damages resulting from the use of purchased slideshows.

Modifications to Terms

Changes to Terms: We reserve the right to modify these terms and conditions at any time. Changes will be effective immediately upon posting on this page.

By completing a purchase, you agree to these terms and conditions. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact our support team.

Terms of Service Update: Passcodes and TestDrive

TestDrive is a feature of Innovation that allows teachers to provide content to anonymous users via passcodes. There are some limitations to using passcodes. Student data is not recorded or saved, teachers cannot edit tasks or monitor student access. We’d like to encourage teachers to become subscribers! As such, teachers can use the passcodes to import the task into their own account and then have full access to all Innovation features.

You can access the full Innovation Assessments LLC terms of service here.

The updated section on passcodes is as follows.

TestDrive ACCESS VIA PASSCODES

Innovation Assessments LLC provides access to teacher-generated content through unique passcodes. Each passcode allows students to access specific learning applications within the TestDrive platform. Teachers who purchase or are granted passcodes may share them solely with their students for completing designated online tasks in TestDrive. Passcodes do not require student registration or login.

By using a passcode as described above, you acknowledge and agree to the following:

Restricted Sharing: Passcodes are intended only for students in the teacher’s class or assigned group. Passcodes may not be shared outside this scope.
Third-Party Content: Embedded content, such as YouTube videos, may not be owned or controlled by Innovation Assessments LLC and could become inaccessible without notice.
Duration of Access: Passcodes will generally remain functional indefinitely, allowing access to activities as long as they are part of the active curriculum. However, Innovation Assessments LLC reserves the right to deactivate or discontinue passcodes in the event of significant business changes or content restructuring. Passcodes will remain active until such a time unless otherwise stated.
Content Revisions: Activities accessed through passcodes may be revised, edited, or updated at any time without notice to improve content quality, adapt to curriculum changes, or meet technical requirements.

Teaching Social Studies with Extended Primary Sources

One of my favorite lessons teaching any time period of social studies has always been working with extended length primary sources.

Students’ initial difficulty completing these tasks usually stemmed from habits I like to help them break. The first bad habit was to copy sections of the source text verbatim instead of paraphrasing. Another was the expectation that all the answers were in the source text. An important, if not vital, competency in studying primary sources is to be aware of the outside knowledge and possible biases that the reader them-self brings to the source. This task calls on students to bring prior knowledge to direct awareness.

My primary source analysis task is a short essay. The process is the same for every source no matter the time period or even the grade level. Students address the source type, purpose, and audience. They provide relevant historical context from their own knowledge. They summarize the source. They address reliability factors. For middle schoolers, these “essays” are really more like short compositions. My high schoolers came to compose more extended length essays. Here’s one you can have for nothing:

g9.1 Code of Hammurabi_FULL Download

Up to my retirement, I was teaching in a small, rural K-12 school where I had students for three or even four years. This was a great benefit for so many reasons, one of which was they became “skilled at the skills”. I integrated a lot of writing and reading in my courses.

The Important is Not Always in the Text Itself

Most elementary level reading comprehension tasks call on students to locate an answer in the text to prove they understand. Working with primary sources means understanding what was going on in the historical period that produced the document. Getting students to grasp this takes patience and perseverance. This task asks students to deduce how the audience was expected to react to the source, who the intended audience was, what was going on historically at the time, and factors affecting reliability of the source. None of this is in the document explicitly itself.

A Great Way to Teach Critical Thinking and Deduction

I cannot recommend this assignment strongly enough for my fellow social studies teachers out there. I assigned this right after I completed the content delivery in a unit. It lent itself to long-term retention of the historical content because students needed to apply this newly acquired knowledge to the text. It promotes reading comprehension. It stimulates discussion in class. Often, a student would have a question about the source or how to answer questions of bias and audience and reliability. It would make a great opportunity to pause and have a discussion about these things. These extended length primary sources offer much more to the learning process that the short 200-word snippets we find in textbooks and on state tests (think document-based essays and constructed-response tasks).

The Essay Prompt Assignment may be a Hard Sell to Teachers

I have not been very successful in promoting this method to many others. Very few of the essay versions sell at our TeachersPayTeachers store. I think I understand why. It takes time and consistency to teach reliability factors to students. Grading a hundred short essays every unit of study is a daunting proposition in light of everything else we have to do. More than one transfer student remarked that my social studies courses had a lot of writing. None regretted it. More than one said they learned to write in my class.

But I get it! So, I am developing an automated multiple-choice version of these assignments. Mind you, reader, I feel that doing this as a composition is a better practice, but I can also see how doing a multiple-choice version of this task can be very instructive. I invite you to download this free resource to try it out.

Primary Source Analysis: Code of Hammurabi, 1TK3-D3DC-A16143Z-437-JON [preview] — Use the passcode at our website here.

The Multiple-Choice Version

First of all, if you want to have your students write the essay version of this assignment, each prompt includes the same organizer to guide their writing.

I have carefully documented where I got the source using an easy-to-understand source citation system that I borrowed from genealogists. This citation is presented first and should prompt the student to consider factors affecting reliability.

The multiple-choice version is auto-corrected. You get a passcode that students use to access the online task at the Innovation website. Learn more about our passcodes from this short video:

The questions are categorized under “Observations” whose categories are intended audience, historical context, source summary, and reliability factors. The resource includes a text version of the questions in case you don’t feel the online auto-corrected version is best.

g9.1 QUESTIONS for Code of Hammurabi Download

Primary Source Analysis: Code of Hammurabi, 1TK3-D3DC-A16143Z-437-JON [preview] — Use the passcode at our website here.