Free Assessment Tool Gets Anonymity Issue Under Control

GetFast
http://www.getfast.ca
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GetFast, a free online assessment tool reviewed in a previous issue of MasterMind Explorer, has increased the value and usefulness of its free service by addressing and resolving elegantly an important issue connected to the anonymity of the assessments submitted.

People had been concerned about the fact that because students could enter results as many times as they wanted, there would not be statistical integrity. Zvjezdan Patz has now programmed a new feature that allows instructors to decide on the type of anonymity they can give their students.

The default response type is still one student, unlimited answers. However, if instructors should choose, they can select one student, one answer.

How it works is that instructors can just enter the number of people in their course and FAST will generate individual, unique passwords in addition to the course password.
Instructors can than either

a) e-mail all their students with the GetFast tool,

b) e-mail some students and print the rest of the password combinations or

c) just print all of the unique passwords and hand them out in class.

The instructor never sees which passwords get used. The students are unable to enter results more than once. Statistical integrity is maintained as is anonymity.

I encourage all of you to go and have a look at what has been done on FAST.