Assessment Item Management

For each subject record, you define what is to be assessed, what sort of results are to be recorded for each item of assessment and which results are to be reported upon to parents. These are a subject’s assessment items and they are a critical component of Accelerus.

Each subject can have within it multiple sets of assessment items. This is especially the case for what we deem to be annual subjects, ie subjects which go for the whole year with the same sets of students in their classes. You might have a set of assessment items pertaining to semester 1 and another set for semester 2 or even for each term within the year.

Even when a subject only covers one semester, you may have multiple sets of items, eg one set for interim reports and one for the end of semester reports.

Assessment items are one of the most important aspects of Accelerus and care needs to be taken in setting them up.

AI SubjectWindowNumbers

When you open a subject window, it will open with its Assessment Items tab to the fore, the features thereof described in the table below.

Feature

The cycles currently selected in the Academic Cycle Selector appear in the top right corner of the subject's title bar. It is important that the correct cycles are selected before opening subjects, especially if your subjects are very similar across cycles, so that work is not carried out in the wrong record.

A subject may only belong to one of the currently selected cycles.

For example, the subject above has been opened in Sem2, 2011, ie two cycles are in force. However, the actual subject belongs to 2011, as shown in its Academic Cycle field.

You cannot have two subjects in overlapping cycles with the same code. 07ENEN can only be found in either 2011 or Sem2. As it belongs to 2011, it cannot belong to any other cycle that falls in 2011.

The Assessment Items tab contains all of the assessment items that apply to the particular subject, which have been set up by the Accelerus administrator or other personnel who have permission to administer assessment items. This may include those with subject level roles who are permitted to add and modify assessment items for their own subjects.

The next tab is the Class Assessment Items tab, which displays the assessment items that have been created by teachers for their own use, at the class level.

The assessment items table is where assessment items that apply to the subject are added, modified and deleted.

Each row in the table is one assessment item, which will appear as a column in class and subject results windows when teachers are assessing their students.

Each subject may have multiple sets of assessment items that pertain to different report runs.

Each of the fields in assessment items have a specific meaning and format, with assessment items being assigned a marking scheme and, optionally, tags.

The coding of assessment items is a very important part of the setting up of assessments items.

The Assessment Items tab's toolbar contains icons that are available where the user has appropriate permissions to administer assessment items. These allow, from left to right, assessment items to be:

•

Added

•

Copied

•	Moved up or down

•	Filled up or down

•	Locked or unlocked

•	Restricted or made available.

•	In addition, you may go directly to the Marking Scheme Explorer to view details of available marking schemes.

AI SubjectToolbar

The standard icons and methods for deleting records from tables in Accelerus may be used in the Assessment Item tab. When assessment items are deleted, however, any results associated with the items will be deleted also. The Reinstate icon allows those assessment items marked for deletion to be reinstated.

Perhaps the most important aspect of an assessment item is its code. A consistent and well thought out coding system will make setting up assessment items and templates much easier and efficient.

In setting up a coding system, take the following into account:

•

Each assessment item must have a code which uniquely identifies it within the subject for the particular academic cycle. You cannot use the same code twice in the one subject record, even if you are assessing the exact same thing in two report runs that apply to the subject, eg in term 1 and term 2. Therefore, your coding system may need to allow for a prefix or suffix that uniquely identifies it and connects it with the run, eg COM1 and COM2. This is particularly important in subjects that belong to annual academic cycles and therefore, will contain multiple sets of items.

If you use numeric suffixes, the assessment item copying processes in Accelerus will automatically increment the suffix. For example, you may copy all of the items that end with a 1 back into the subject itself and a new set can be created automatically with a 2 replacing the 1, ready for the next term or semester.

•	Every subject can have the same set of assessment items, with the same codes. In fact, setting up a consistent set of assessment item codes across all subjects is very important.

For example, if all subjects have a series of work requirements, then use a set of codes beginning with WR in all subjects, or use an AT prefix for all assessment tasks.

Do not be tempted to use a code which tries to summarise the task, eg HWORK, BEHAV, EFFORT, when a generic series of codes beginning with WH for work habits would be better.

A consistent coding system will make setting up assessment items easier, allowing you to copy items from one subject to others, as well as reducing your work at template set up time. Longer term, it will make retrieval of results data for analyses easier and more meaningful.

•	The way you code your assessment items will depend on whether your subjects have been assigned to annual academic cycles or to subcycles such as semesters and/or terms.

➢	In annual subjects, sets of assessment items are required for each different report run, eg term 1 and term 3, semester 1 and semester 2.

Therefore, you need to code the items in a way that makes the items easily identifiable and makes them unique. For example, if there is a set of assessment tasks in semester 1 and semester 2 report runs, you might code as follows:

Codes

Meaning

Rationale

AT1S1

AT2S1

AT3S1

•	AT represents Assessment Task

•	1,2,3 represent the three different tasks

•	S1 represents the semester.

S2 would be used for semester 2; T1 and T3 for terms, making the items easily identifiable and unique within the subject.

Even if subjects have different numbers of assessment tasks, the structure is the same, it is just that some will have AT4S1, AT5S1, etc.

In comparison, if AT1, AT2, AT3, etc, was the coding system, in one subject AT4 could belong to one report run and to a different run in another subject, because of different numbers of items across subjects.

Also, the setting up of report templates is more time consuming as different templates will be required for different combinations of assessment tasks.

➢	In semester or term subjects, fewer or even just one set of assessment items may be required.

In this case, you may code assessment items without a suffix.

Code

Meaning

Rationale

AT1S

AT2S

AT3S

•	AT represents Assessment Task

•	1,2,3 represent the three different tasks

•	S represents semester, where there is to be a set of semester and term items in the same subject. Otherwise, if only one set of items per subject, this suffix can be excluded.

S would be used for semester, T for term, making the items easily identifiable and unique within the subject.

Even if subjects have different numbers of assessment tasks, the structure is the same, it is just that some will have AT4S, AT4S, etc.

Assessment items may be copied easily across semester or term cycles, and templates set up in one semester can be used in the next as the codes will be identical in both.

Assessment items have a diverse set of properties or fields, each of which has very specific functions or uses. It is important to understand these functions and the various aspects of assessment items, in order that your database is set up correctly and efficiently.

AI SubjectWindow

Field/Column

Details

# - Ordinal

The ordinal value determines the order that the assessment item columns appear in the class and subject results windows when teachers first open these windows for their classes or subjects.

You cannot manually assign a number. When you add assessment items, the next number is assigned automatically. However, you may move rows up or down if you want to reorder them. When you do so, their number changes accordingly.

Teachers may change the order that the items appear in their class results windows, for their own purposes, if they wish, but this will not impact upon the order the items are stored in the Assessment Items tab or the database.

Also, the order of the assessment items does not affect the order they appear in student reports.

System status

The system column is not able to be changed manually. An icon in the column indicates that the assessment item was created by Accelerus as part of the Quick Setup window's processes, as opposed to those items which were created manually and, therefore, do not have an icon.

These items apply to schools in the Victorian Catholic and Government sectors who use the Quick Setup window to produce the assessment items and report templates for AusVELS reports.

Locked status

The locking of assessment items prevents teachers from changing results stored in the items. Assessment items may be locked or unlocked in an individual subject by clicking the appropriate one of the Lock and Unlock icons. Alternatively, and more commonly, they are locked in bulk using the Assessment Item Explorer, eg all of the items belonging to term 1 or semester 1 could be locked in one process.

Where an item is locked, a padlock icon appears in its Locked cell.

Restricted status

Restricted assessment items are not visible to teachers when they are working in a class results window. Assessment items may be restricted or made available in an individual subject by clicking the appropriate one of the Restrict or Make available icons. Alternatively, like locking, assessment items may be restricted in bulk using the Assessment Item Explorer.

Where an item is restricted, an icon appears in its Restricted cell.

Code

The code uniquely identifies the assessment item in the subject, and is used in many processes, including the inserting of fields in templates, for analyses, etc. Therefore, a consistent and well thought out coding system needs to be used when setting up assessment items.

Codes may be up to 20 characters long, and may only use alphanumeric, underscore, hyphen and apostrophe characters.

Marking Scheme

Each assessment item must be assigned an already-existing marking scheme which determines what may be entered by teachers when assessing their students, eg an A to E grade or a numeric mark, etc.