How to create and run an Assessment session

An Assessment is a Live Quiz that students complete in their own time. It is the session type for homework.

When to use it: After a lesson, when you want a fuller read on what did and did not land than a couple of in-class checks can give you.

Assessments work the same way wherever you run Signal — in your browser, in Microsoft Teams, or in Canvas. The only step that differs by platform is how students reach the assessment, covered under “The student experience”.

What an Assessment is for

An Assessment works the same way as a Live Quiz, with one difference: students receive all the questions at once and complete them in their own time.

Because it runs outside class, you can go broader. Ten or more questions gives a much clearer reading of what students did not understand than the two or three quick checks a lesson allows.

Setting up

1. Describe the session in the AI generation box, covering what you taught in the lesson: year group, topic and subtopics, as with any other session type.
2. Choose how many questions to generate. More than for an in-class session, since students have time.
3. Set a due date. The default is a week out.
4. Decide whether to allow late submissions. Turning it off prevents submissions after the due date; turning it on flags late submissions to you.
5. Decide on personalised feedback. This is available on the premium version. When it is enabled, students receive AI-generated feedback on each answer once they have completed their reflections, and you review it before it goes out. It can be turned off.
6. Decide whether to shuffle quiz and poll answer options. Shuffling gives each student a different answer order, so students working alongside each other cannot simply compare letters. The correct answer stays correct — only its position changes.

Tip: Generation takes longer with more questions, but should still complete within a minute. If it fails on the first attempt, try again.

Confidence and the reflection gate

Alongside the questions, Signal generates a confidence step and a reflection step. Both can be adjusted or turned off, but collecting confidence at minimum is recommended, because it gives students something to reflect against.

The reflection types available are simple open reflection, the Gibbs cycle, and 3-2-1.

Students then move through a fixed sequence:

1. Answer all the questions.
2. Rate their confidence and comment on it.
3. Submit.
4. See which answers were right and wrong, along with their feedback.
5. Complete a final reflection on how they feel about that feedback.

Their full score stays locked until that final reflection is done. The point is that students engage with the feedback before they see the number, rather than reading the score and stopping there.

Editing questions

Questions generate as single answer by default. Switch a question to multiple, then ask Signal to rewrite it, to get more than one correct answer.

Every generated question includes an answer explanation covering both why the correct answer is correct and why each incorrect answer is wrong. If you remove an answer option, part of that explanation may still refer to it — ask Signal to rewrite the explanation when you do.

Per-question settings let you require, make optional, or hide the reason field where students explain their answer. Required is the default, because it captures more about student thinking.

Poll and open answer question types are both available. Open answers need success criteria and a model answer; without them, Signal cannot generate meaningful personalised feedback.

The student experience

Students join via the link, or see the assessment automatically if they are in Microsoft Teams or Canvas with linked accounts.

They work through the questions one at a time and cannot skip ahead. Where a reason is required, they have to explain their answer before they can move on, and a minimum character count prevents single-character responses.

After answering everything, they rate their overall confidence, comment on what they found tricky, and submit.

They then see their feedback: the original explanation you saw, plus — if personalised feedback is switched on — feedback generated by comparing their answer and their reasoning against that explanation.

Their score stays locked until they complete the final reflection.

Tip: On multiple answer questions, a partially correct response is marked as somewhat correct rather than simply wrong.

The teacher view

Question by question, you can see every individual answer. Answer insights become available once more than two students have submitted.

You can also go straight to the confidence and reflection responses, which is the quickest way to understand how students see their own performance.

Multiple answer questions show fully correct, partially correct and fully incorrect responses separately.

Closing the assessment produces the overall session insight. Export to PDF and presenter view are both available, though presenter view is less relevant for a session students complete in their own time.