Types of Diagnostic and Summative Assessment Available in LaunchPad for The St. Martin’s Guide

LaunchPad for The St. Martin's Guide to Writing comes fully loaded with many types of assessment, from formative activities that support skill-building to comprehension quizzes and grammar exercises to interactive tutorials. Here’s an overview of the types of assessment available to you and your students.

Diagnostics

Looking to get an idea of your students’ proficiency with some core reading and writing skills? LaunchPad for The St. Martin's Guide to Writing includes eight diagnostic tests, a pre- and post-test covering:

• Sentence Grammar
• Punctuation, Style, and Mechanics
• Reading Skills
• Reading Strategies

Each test includes access to class and roster reports that allow you to see student performance overall and by sub-topic.

If you have assigned both the pre- and post-test for a topic, you will have access to comparison reports. These reports are accessible through the instructor dashboard inside each post-test.

You can use the diagnostic comparison reports to:

• Track improvement across multiple sections, or across a program (reports are exportable)
• Create opportunities for students to see a visual representation of their progress in the course (reports can be printed for students)
• Continually adapt your teaching based on real performance data.

Pre-made quizzes

Most of the assessment in your print book is assignable in LaunchPad. If you’d like to explore assignable assessment for any chapter, simply open a unit and click Browse Resources for this Unit.

If you see anything you’d like to assign, click to open it and review the content. If you want to assign it, click the Add to course button in the upper right corner of your screen. The item will appear at the top of the unit, and you can drag to reposition it wherever you’d like. Assign it as you would any other asset in LaunchPad.

To learn more about adding content, including quizzes, to your LaunchPad unit, see Adding Content to a LaunchPad unitWill be opened in a new tab..

In LaunchPad for The St. Martin's Guide to Writing, you will also find quizzes for every professional reading selection in the text, including:

• Autoscored comprehension quizzes that test your students’ recall
• Summary Activities (with a sample summary as feedback) that challenge students to convey the gist of the reading in their own words
• Synthesis Activities
• Interactive versions of the Basic Features Activities, which follow most readings

Like other pre-made assessments, you can find these quizzes by accessing the Resources panel from within any LaunchPad unit and locating the quiz for any reading you’ve assigned.

Exercise Central

Bedford/St. Martin’s Exercise Central has been a longtime favorite of instructors and students who want an effective way to practice building skills that are critical to students’ success as college writers. A bank of Exercise Central quizzes is available in your LaunchPad, allowing you to

• Offer additional interventions based on your students’ diagnostic quiz results
• Assign pre-built exercise sets on the fly, as you notice patterns of error in your students’ writing
• Create and edit custom quizzes that match the needs of your students
• Offer quizzes that allow multiple attempts so that students can continue to practice concepts until they are closer to mastering them.

To learn more about adding Exercise Central quizzes to your course, see How do I add Exercise Central questions to my quiz?Will be opened in a new tab.