Text Highlighting in Assessments

Students can use the text highlighting tool to emphasize key information in the text they are reading in multiple colors while answering questions on an assessment. Instructors do not see the highlights and they do not persist after students submit their attempts.

Enable Text Highlighting for an Assessment

Text highlighting must be enabled in the settings for the entire assessment. The setting is disabled by default.

In a course-level assessment, you can enable text highlighting with the following steps:

1. Click the assessment and toggle into the Setup tab.
2. Scroll to the Assessment Toolbar section.
3. Select Yes next to Students can highlight text.
4. Click Save at the bottom of the page to complete.

To enable text highlighting for a managed assessment in AMP, use the following steps:

1. Click Resources in the header of Schoology.
2. Click Assessment in the left menu to open AMP.
3. Click the gear icon to the right of the managed assessment.
4. Select Edit from the drop-down menu.
5. Click Settings in the top right corner of the managed assessment.
6. Select Yes next to Highlight Text.
7. Click Confirm to complete.

Instructors with the ability to preview the assessment experience can test out the highlight capability during the preview of an assessment or managed assessment.

Highlight Text During an Assessment

To highlight, students can double-click a single word or drag their cursor over a phrase, sentence, or paragraph. On touchscreen devices, including the Schoology mobile apps, students can tap or select a word to highlight.

When the highlight option appears, there is a drop-down option to select from one of four colors. Students can switch between the four colors at any time. 

Note that the four colors available for highlighting reflect the Accessibility setting 

Above: Students can select a color scheme for the assessment.

Remove Highlight from Text

Text remains highlighted as students progress across questions within the assessment, including when they resume an assessment attempt. 

To un-highlight text, click the highlighted text and click Remove:

Which question types are supported for Text Highlighting?

While text highlighting is enabled at the assessment level, highlighting is not supported in the following areas when answering certain questions:

1. All drag and drop responses (the question stimulus is highlightable):

• Matching
• Ordering
• Fill-In-The-Blank Drag and Drop
• Label Image
• Number Line

2. Charting area of chart question type (the question stimulus is highlightable)
3. Highlight text question type
4. All student-created text:

• Short Answer/Essay responses
• Math Short Answer responses
• Fill-In-The-Blank Text responses