Types of Diagnostic and Summative Assessment Available in LaunchPad for Practical Argument

LaunchPad for Practical Argument 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.

Looking to get an idea of your students’ proficiency with some core reading and writing skills? LaunchPad for Practical Argument 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.

Most of the assessment in your print book is assignable in LaunchPad, including end-of-chapter and end-of-reading questions. If you’d like to explore assignable assessment for any chapter, simply open a unit a 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 unit.

You can assign auto-scored reading comprehension quizzes for any reading in your text. 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.

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?