The difficulties associated with delivering and grading traditional paper tests and quizzes are quickly becoming a thing of the past. As a social studies teacher, no longer will you have to divide your time between teaching and grading. Instead you will be able to redirect your attention back to what really matters: your students.

With Edulastic’s free digital educational assessment platform you can take teaching and learning to the next level. You’ll have access to multiple easy-to-use features, like technologically enhanced items (TEIs) and immediate assessment data. Edulastic’s next-generation features can support you in your teaching journey throughout the school year. This digital assessment platform will enhance student learning and help you guide students towards success. 

No matter whether you’re teaching about Mesopotamia, the Civil War, or even local state history…

Here are eight reasons why social studies teachers use Edulastic! 

8) Autograding 

With auto-grading, you get to focus on teaching, rather than spending hours grading mountains of paper homework and exams. Middle school social studies teacher Kyle Nielsen said that Edulastic drastically cut down on the time he spent grading assignments. As a result, this feature made his teaching life much easier. 

7) Essay-Based Questions

Furthermore, with the time saved with autograding, you can give more quality feedback on essay-based questions. These crucial questions assess a student’s understanding of complex concepts and a student’s ability to form strong arguments. 

Giving feedback  through Edulastic also avoids issues such as “students not being able to read [an educator’s] handwriting” (Heinrich et. al, 2009).

In the end, you can get feedback back to students much quicker. Also, the feedback they receive is easily accessible on their Edulastic student account. Either way, it’s a win-win for both teachers and students!

6) More Than Just Multiple Choice

In a traditional classroom, using multiple choice is a double-edged sword. You can easily grade multiple-choice assessments. But these questions might not accurately assess what students know as they can randomly guess the correct answer.

Luckily, Edulastic provides numerous types of easy-to-grade questions for your assessments, providing additional options than just the standard multiple-choice questions. Below are a few technology-enhanced items especially favored by social studies teachers: 

Drag and Drop: Students click and drag their answer choice and drop it into the corresponding space. This question type is especially handy if you want to assess your students’ understanding of geography. Middle school social studies teacher Emily Young stated that this was one of her favorite questions to use in her assessments.

Resequencing: Students organize the provided answers in the correct order, depending on what you ask of them. For instance, you can use this question type to assess students’ understanding of difficult concepts. You can test a student’s knowledge of chronological events in history or of the order of different social class structures. High school social studies teacher Nick Bernardini even says that resequencing is one of his favorite question types. 

5) Free Question Bank

Access over 30k pre-made history items in Edulastic’s extensive public and Edulastic certified item bank. No matter what, writing new questions will always take time. By having access to such an extensive question bank, social studies teachers benefit from another great time saver. 

Once you find questions that match your curriculum, add them to the assessment and assign them to your class. Want to tweak a question to better fit your needs? No problem! All you need to do is duplicate the question and add your edits.

4) Incorporate Multimedia Content

Let middle school history teacher Kyle Nielsen walk you through different social studies question types on Edulastic!

History is so full of vibrant elements of culture, from music to art, and inspiring speeches. Why not bring history to life in your assessments?

Incorporate multimedia such as a video of a tour site of a Mayan temple. Or, you can incorporate multimedia like an audio clip from a famous inaugural address. Whatever you choose to incorporate will enhance your test questions and engage your students. 

Learn how easy it is to embed multimedia into your future assessments and bring social studies to life for your students. 

3) Prepare Students for State Standards

Sixth-grade social studies teacher Janine Poole from Tennessee uses Edulastic for creating quizzes based on state standards. Then, Poole reviews the assessment results “to look at data by standards [and help her] assess learning and any need for remediation before [the next] tests.” Like Poole, any social studies teacher can use Edualstic to prepare students for state standards much more efficiently. 

(Pro-tip: You can search for state standard assessments in the question bank. This makes creating quizzes or tests that will prepare your students for state testing that much easier!) 

2) Instant Assessment Data

Social studies teachers adore how they are immediately able to access data from their students’ assessments with Edulastic. For example, Young stated she loved the “immediate feedback for [her students]” and the “data tracking” available to her after every assessment. Altogether, Edulastic provided valuable data for figuring out how to restructure her lessons. 

Similarly, Bernardini noted that educators who used Edulastic no longer spent hours “accumulating and pouring over data points from assessments.” Instead, Edulastic did all the work compiling data for them. Consequently, Bernardini says they could “focus on reteaching,” which is a much better use of time in the classroom with students. 

1) Free For Teachers

No matter what, Edulastic is always free for teachers! Sign up now!

Works Cited 

Heinrich, Eva, et al. “Recommendations for the Use of E-Tools for Improvements around Assignment Marking Quality.” Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, vol. 34, no. 4, Aug. 2009, pp. 469–479. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/02602930802071122.

Learn More from Social Studies Teachers Who Use Edulastic

Check out the Social Studies Teacher Talk Webinar to learn more about bringing digital assessments into your classroom here

Read about others educators’ experiences using Edulastic here. These interviews can provide you with new ideas and inspirations on teaching in your classroom!