This guide shows System Admins, School Admins, and Assessment Coordinators how to set up and share a Common Assessment on Wayground. If you need this capability, contact your Admin to update your role.
Prepare your Assessment
A Common Assessment starts from a regular Assessment, so prepare one first. You can create a new Assessment, use Wayground AI, pick one from My Library or the Wayground Library, or ask a teacher to share one with you.
Create the Common Assessment
Once your Assessment is ready and tagged:
Open the Assessment.
Click Common assessments in the bottom-left panel of the Assessment page.
A full page opens with two tabs: Configuration and Sharing.
Configuration page
The Configuration page brings together all the settings that define how the Common Assessment behaves for students and teachers. Complete each section, then click Continue to move to the Sharing page.
Basic settings
Title: use a clear title. A consistent naming style helps you manage Assessments later (e.g., “[District] [Subject] [Grade] Unit [#]”).
Standards-aligned reporting: turns on automatically when all questions are tagged. Keep it on to track student performance by standard.
Subjects and grades: tag the Assessment with the right subjects and grades so it appears correctly in listings and reports.
Schedule
Start and end time: set the testing window. The window can span hours, days, or weeks. Add buffer time for absences or re-attempts. Teachers can only run the Assessment between these times. The start time cannot be in the past.
Duration (optional): set a timer to guide students. The Assessment does not end automatically when time runs out; it ends only when a student submits it or a teacher ends it for them.
Assessment integrity
LockDown Browser
LockDown Browser blocks other apps, websites, and tabs during the Assessment. When you turn it on, students must take the Assessment in LockDown Browser. Students who do not have it installed are prompted to download it first.
Allowlisted applications: if your Assessment needs a third-party resource (like Desmos for graphing, a virtual lab, a news article, or a YouTube video), add it to the allowlist so students can access it during the session.
Device support: LockDown Browser works on Mac, Windows, and Chromebook. For other devices, contact support@wayground.com. You can also review the full system requirements for LockDown Browser.
If LockDown Browser is off, the Assessment opens in full-screen with the Anti-Cheating Monitor. Wayground notifies teachers when a student tries to switch tabs or open a new one. Learn more about the Anti-Cheating Monitor.
Shuffle questions: randomizes question order for each student. Use this only if question order does not affect the Assessment.
Shuffle answer options: randomizes the order of answer choices for Multiple Choice questions.
Universal tools and Accommodations
Set tools and Accommodations that apply to every student taking the Common Assessment.
Calculator
Disabled: no student sees a calculator.
Enabled: every student sees a calculator.
Teacher Set Accommodation: only students whose teacher has enabled it in their profile see a calculator.
Reference Materials
Default: no documents are attached, and students don't see a References panel.
When added: every student sees the same References panel with the documents you've attached.
Read-Aloud
Same three options as Calculator: Disabled, Enabled, and Teacher Set Accommodation.
Reduce Answer Choices
Disabled (default): all students see the full set of answer choices. This matches state test formats and is recommended for high-stakes Assessments such as unit tests and quarter finals.
Teacher Set Accommodation: only students whose teacher has enabled it see reduced answer choices.
Reporting configuration
Performance bands
Performance bands define accuracy ranges to group students into performance levels. They apply to overall scores, standards, and individual questions, and help you spot trends across classes, schools, subgroups, and districts.
Adjust the ranges to match your grading scale:
Did not meet: performance is below the expected threshold. Key concepts may need reteaching.
Partially met: emerging understanding. Some review or support may be needed.
Met: solid understanding. Performance matches expectations.
Exceeded: strong accuracy and depth. Ready for enrichment or extension.
Accountability goal
Set a target for the percentage of students expected to reach the Met or Exceeded bands. Reports compare actual performance against this target and highlight cohorts, schools, and classes that meet or miss it.
Teacher permissions
Allow teachers to view the assessment: keep this off so teachers cannot see questions beforehand. This prevents teaching to the test.
Allow teachers to view the class report: lets teachers see their class’s performance before the end date. On by default for Assessments that have Open-Ended questions that need manual grading.
Allow teachers to add student records: lets teachers add records for students who need Accommodations (like scribe support) or who take the Assessment offline (like students in detention). Teachers must provide a reason, which is logged in the Common Assessment report.
Other settings
Grade sync: Grade sync is enabled for all Common Assessments. Student grades are automatically shared to connected LMS gradebooks such as Google Classroom, Canvas, and Schoology.
Once Configuration is complete, click Continue to move to the Sharing page.
Assign to Teachers (Sharing page)
On the Sharing page, choose how to assign the Common Assessment to teachers. You have two options: by courses (recommended) or via a custom team.
Option 1: Via courses (recommended)
Pick the course, term, and schools from the dropdowns.
This is the most reliable way to assign a Common Assessment across your district. Wayground uses course data from your student information system (through Clever or ClassLink roster syncs) to automatically assign the Assessment to every teacher who teaches the selected course.
Select assignment method for teachers
1. Clever or ClassLink class (recommended)
Teachers can assign Assessments only through their Clever or ClassLink classes. Course sections are synced automatically, ensuring that each student’s school and subgroup associations are mapped accurately. This gives admin reports correct school and subgroup attribution and reliable data for deeper reporting.
2. Any class
Teachers can assign the Assessment to any class.
Teachers must tag each class to the correct school for school attribution.
If a class is synced from a Learning Management System such as Google Classroom, Canvas, or Schoology, grades pass back to the LMS class gradebook.
Option 2: Via a custom team
Assign the Common Assessment to a team of teachers you have created. This helps with specialized groups or non-standard teams, such as cross-school PLCs, pilot cohorts, or departments not tied to a single course.
Create a new team: upload a spreadsheet of teacher emails to build a large team quickly.
Select an existing team: pick a team, and Wayground assigns the Assessment to its members automatically. To learn how to build a team, see this article.
School selection (District Plans only)
On District Plans, there is one extra step: select the schools the Common Assessment should be assigned to. This makes sure School Admins from those schools can see it in their Wayground account and access their school’s reports.
Wayground adds School Admins from the selected schools, along with all System Admins in your account, to the Common Assessment team.
Roles and capabilities by status
What each role can do depends on the Common Assessment’s status.
Edit a Common Assessment
What you can edit depends on the status of the Common Assessment:
Before the start time (Scheduled): the creator can edit both content and settings.
While the status is Active: only the end time can be changed.
Once the status is Ended: the creator can reopen the Assessment to extend the deadline or allow more participation.
Share edit access: by default, only the creator can edit a Common Assessment. To let others edit, add them as co-editors from the share settings on the resource details page.
Reopening an ended Common Assessment
The creator can reopen an ended Assessment to extend the deadline or include students who missed the original testing window, such as after absences or class disruptions.
To reopen an Assessment:
Open the Ended tab on the Common Assessments dashboard.
Click the Assessment you want to reopen.
Click EReopen.
Set a new end date.
Managing membership
The creator can see which teachers and admins have access to a Common Assessment directly from the details page, without opening a separate section.
Who has access
System Admins: access every Common Assessment in the organization.
School Admins: access Assessments shared with their school, whether they joined Wayground before or after the Assessment was created.
Assessment Coordinators: access Assessments shared with the schools they oversee. [confirm Assessment Coordinator access scope matches the live product, and whether they appear in the membership overview alongside System Admins and School Admins]
Teachers: access syncs from the Teams or Courses the Assessment is assigned to.
Teacher access follows the Assessment’s timeline. Before the start date, Wayground syncs both additions and removals from the linked Teams or Courses. Between the start date and the end date, only new teacher additions sync. After the end date, no one can add or remove teachers from the Assessment.
To change which teachers have access, update the Teams or Courses in the share settings panel for that Assessment. If you assigned the Assessment to a custom team, add or remove teachers from the Teams section in My Library.
Was this article helpful?
That’s Great!
Thank you for your feedback
Sorry! We couldn't be helpful
Thank you for your feedback
Feedback sent
We appreciate your effort and will try to fix the article