I found myself in a conundrum last week.

My college comp seniors took a subject-verb agreement quiz.  About a third of them did very well, scoring As and Bs.  The other two-thirds scored D- or below.

The bell curve did not exist.  A middle ground did not exist.  They’d either mastered the concepts or were still very much struggling.

Obviously I needed to do some more work with the two-thirds group, but then what about the other third?  Do I force them to sit through more review and reteaching when they obviously understand the information?

I decided it was time to give Versal a whirl.

Versal

 

I happened upon the course-building website last semester.  Super impressed with it, I was determined to set up some courses on it.  Then time got away from me until this opportunity presented itself.

Versal works through gadgets.  After starting a course, you simply choose the next gadget you want and drag it into your workspace.  Want to start with a video?  Drag up the video gadget.  Rather start with text?  Drag up the text gadget.  Want to quiz the students about the video and/or text.  Pull the quiz gadget into the workspace–you can even program it so the student can’t go on until he answers the question correctly.

Versal gadget 1

 

Check the the gadgets above–lots of possibilities await.  For this project I only used video, quiz, and text, but there are so many possibilities to be integrated.  The gadgets make the course building so simple.  Drag, add your information, and you’re done!

Versal can be embedded in websites, blogs, Tumblr, and some LMS systems.  I followed the simple instructions to upload to Schoology, and it worked like a breeze.  (I also embedded it into my Google site, but I didn’t look as sleek, and since my students take quizzes via Schoology, it was just as easy to have them locate the Versal course there.)

Here are a couple screenshots from my course:

SVA video view SVA Quiz

 

I’m still waiting for the verdict from my students.  They’ll have a couple of drafting days later this week, when they’ll also be welcome to work on the Versal course and retake the quiz.