Rather than sending a locked copy, administrators have the ability to assign an assessment right from within their account.

What is the benefit of Administrators assigning the assessment?

It essentially takes out the middle step of teachers assigning the assessment. If an administrator assigns the assessment, it is guaranteed that all data from that assessment will aggregate into Assessment Analytics.
Teachers can still grade the assessment.
Teachers can still control assessment settings (such as due dates, availability windows, start dates...).
Teachers can still unassign the assessment.
This is best used for benchmark assessments and the like.

How to Assign an Assessment

Step 1: Select Assessments from the left-hand menu. Make sure you are in your draft assessments.
Step 2: Locate the assessment and select the ellipsis, then choose Assign.

Step 3: Choose the assign settings.

Section 1: Students

In this section, you will choose which students to assign the assessment to.

1: Select the class or classes you wish to assign the assessment to. You can assign to more than one class at a time.

2: Select the group or groups you wish to assign the assessment to. This is an optional setting. You can assign it to more than one group at a time.

3: If needed, remove students from the list by hovering over their name and selecting the x button.

💡 Tip from the Otus Team: If you only need to assign the assessment to specific students, it might be easier to click the Deselect All button, then click on the students you'd like to assign the assessment to.

Optional Feature: Assign By Courses

Depending on how your district is rostered, you may have the option to enable the Assign by Course feature. This will allow admins to assign assessments to courses rather than individual classes. If you are interested in this option, please connect with your Otus Client Experience Partner.

Section 2: Dates and Availability

In this section, you will determine due dates, start dates, and availability windows. All of these components are optional and not required to assign an assessment.

1: Due Date: establishes a date and time for when the assessment is due. If students do not submit the assessment by the due date, it will be given an automatic status of Missing. The student will still be able to access the assessment beyond the due date if there aren't any availability windows.
2: Start Date (assigning at a later date): allows the assessment to be auto-assigned at a certain date and time. The assessment will not appear on the student's notification feed or to do list until this date.
3: Availability Windows: limit student access to an assessment to a specific timeframe. Please use availability windows with caution, as assessments will auto-submit at the conclusion of the last availability window. See this resource for more information.

Section 3: Instructions

This is where you can give brief instructions for the students to see before they take the assessment.

You can type up to 300 words using bold, italics, or underlining.
The image on the right is an example of how the instructions appear for the students.

Section 4: Settings

Include Score in Final Grade: this setting will be available for a points-based assessment only. Toggling this option off will still display the assessment grade in the gradebook for teachers and students to view, but the score will not be calculated into the student's overall grade.

Allow Post Grading Review: this provides the ability to return a graded assessment to students for their review.
🌟 Assign as a Locked Assessment: this is an option from administrator accounts only. If this option is checked, it will allow you to see aggregated data in Historical and Query analytics.

Randomize Questions: presents the assessment questions in a different order for the assigned students. (Advanced and Simple Only)

Allow Student Annotation: features include the use of a notepad, sticky notes, drawing mode, and highlight tool. (Advanced Only)

Lockdown Browser: while taking an assessment, students will not be able to navigate out of Otus until the student exits the assessment or submits it for grading. It eliminates the ability to use external websites while taking an assessment. Note - The student must have the Respondus lockdown browser installed on their device in order to utilize this feature.

Texthelp Speechstream: this feature includes text-to-speech read aloud, translation, dictionary with read aloud, picture dictionary, and highlight pens. (Advanced Only)

Time Limit: how many minutes students have to complete an assessment.

Allow Multiple Attempts: when students are given the ability to attempt the same assessment multiple times.

Allow Graded Assessments with the Status of "Missing" to be Submitted: allows students to still turn in an assessment that has been graded and marked as Missing.
Auto-Score Settings: This section only applies to Advanced Assessments that utilize Standards Based Grading Scales (Non-Points). With this feature, you have the ability to set the default mastery level a student receives for auto-graded questions. If you edit this setting after the assessment has been assigned, you will receive a message explaining that this only applies to future scores, not scores already collected. (Advanced Only)

Once you have completed all of the above, you are ready to assign!

🚨 Google Doc Attachments: In order to assign a Rubric Assessment with a Google Doc attachment, the Main Teacher of the class must log into Otus at least once using the Google SSO button This step establishes the connection between their Otus account and Google Drive and ensures that students will have access to the Google Doc.

FAQ and Troubleshooting

Click to see FAQ and troubleshooting details

Can I unassign an assessment from an entire class?

Yes. This can be done by following the steps outlined in this article.

Can I unassign an assessment from individual students?

Yes. This is done through the Manage Assignees section. For more information, check out this article.

What happens to the student scores if an assessment is unassigned?

Student scores will be deleted. There is a warning presented when an assessment is selected to be unassigned. Please unassign assessments with extreme caution, as the student data attached to that assessment is not able to be retrieved.

What if students need to be able to take the assessment more than once, do I have to assign it multiple times?

No. You can use the Allow Multiple Attempts setting. For more information, check out this article.

Can I assign the same assessment twice?

Yes. A tip from the Otus Team - if you are assigning the same assessment twice, you may want to clone and re-name the assessment so you can distinguish between the two in the gradebook and in your list of assessments.

Can I make edits to the assessment questions or answers after it has been assigned?

You can make edits to any draft assessment at any time, but whether or not it will appear on the already assigned version depends on the type of assessment. Click HERE for more information (link coming soon).

Can I change the settings as mentioned above in Step 4 after the assessment has been assigned?

Yes. For more information on adjusting those settings, check out this article.

What is the difference between deleting an assessment and unassigning an assessment?

Deleting an assessment will remove the assessment from your drafts completely, along with all student scores attached to that assessment. Unassigning an assessment will remove student scores, but the assessment will remain in your drafts for you to use in the future.

How do dates and availability windows account for time zones?

We properly account for the time zone of the machine in use. For example, if an admin located in Pacific Time zone sets an assessment to begin at 11:00 a.m., a student located in Central Time zone will get the assessment at 1:00 p.m.

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