Focus on Assignments - Students

Assignments

Focus on Assignments - Students

The assignments feature of SightReadingFactory.com allows teachers to create custom sight reading assignments for their students to take for assessment purposes. When students launch a SRF assignment, a sight reading exercise is generated for them and after a countdown timer, they record their performance and submit it to their teacher. Their teacher can then grade the assignment and give the student feedback which is then shared back with the student. This page describes the following steps a student takes to launch and record an assignment:

Note: Students can complete Sight Reading Factory assignments on smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, Chromebooks, and other netbooks using modern versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Microsoft Edge. Check out our System Requirements page for more detailed information.

Check the dashboard

Once educators enroll a student in their classes, the student will see assignments which are due for that class on their Dashboard in the 'Assignments' tab. The student will be able to launch the assignment if the assignment has not already been completed and the student has not exceeded the number of attempts allowed, as specified for the educator. Clicking 'Launch' does not count as an attempt by the student: an attempt is assessed only after the student sees the music for the assignment.

Check microphone level

When the student launches an assignment in the browser, SightReadingFactory.com prompts them to make a sample recording and listen to it to ensure proper microphone sensitivity before proceeding. Some microphones will are too sensitive for recording instrument/voice performances by default. Once the student records a sample performance, they can re-play it. If it sounds good, they can launch the assignment. If it does not sound good, students can adjust their microphone sensitivity and try the mic check again.

Take the assignment

Check out this video which shows what a student will see when launching an assignment.

When the student is satisfied with the recording quality, the assignment is launched. The student will have to select their instrument/voice type and then select any configurations (level, time signature, key signature) that the teacher did not pre-select for them. Once configured, the assignment composition is presented, along with a countdown timer (set to a length of time specified by the educator when the assignment is created). During the countdown, the student can study the music, hear a metronome click of the tempo, and hear a tuner hint so they can make sure they start on the right pitch. When the countdown timer is finished, the student sees and hears "preparation beats" to lead them in to the exercise. When the preparation beats complete, the microphone starts and the student should begin playing. When the exercise is completed, the student is given 4 choices:

  1. 'Listen' features for self-assessing - The student can listen to the recording they just made, or they can listen to a synthetic recording of the exercise, or they can listen to their recording on top of the synth audio playback.
  2. Submit - Submit the assignment to the educator of the class. The educator will now have access to the assignment from their dashboard. The educator will be able to listen to the performance, see the music that was generated for the student, and share a grade and feedback with the student. Once an assignment has been submitted, the student will not be able to launch it again.
  3. Try Another - If the educator specified "Max Attempts" and the student has not exceeded them, the student can try another exercise without submitting the current performance to the educator. When a student tries another attempt, a new sight reading exercise will be generated for them.
  4. Exit - The student can leave the assignment page without submitting anything to their educator.

Review the assignment

Once a student has submitted an assignment to their educator, they can find feedback on it in the 'Assignments' tab on their dashboard by clicking 'Review' next to the assignment. From the Review page, they can view the orignal composition, listen to the original performance, view the grade and read any feedback given by their educator.

For more information on assignments from an educator perspective, please see Feature Focus: Assignments for Educators