Creating and Managing CBE Forms

Before staff can build forms for use with CBE, you should confirm you have the following configured in Elentra:

  • any rating scales that will be used with form templates or forms

    • this includes global rating scales which will be used on any CBE forms, and

    • milestone rating scale, which will be used on form templates if you use them

  • on-demand workflows

    • while some organizations may already have Other Assessment workflows configured for generic forms, a developer will need to configure additional workflows to support the new form types to be used with CBE (e.g., rubric or Supervisor forms)

Building assessment forms for learners and faculty to access is an important step in using the CBE tools.

Two options for building forms exist:

  • Building forms with a template (e.g. supervisor, procedure, smart tag and field note forms)

  • Building forms without a template (e.g. periodic performance assessment (PPA) or rubric form)

Using a form template allows Elentra to quickly generate forms pulling in the relevant EPAs, milestones, contextual variables and rating scales defined by administrative staff. After form templates are published, they can be triggered by faculty and learners at any point. Form templates have defined items included and administrators can not add additional items to a form template. Examples of form templates are the supervisor form, procedure form, and field note form.

You can also build forms without a form template which gives you increased flexibility to add items of your own design. The rubric and PPA form have some required elements but you can also add additional items to these forms. As long as one item added to a rubric or PPA form is linked to an EPA the form will be triggerable by faculty and learners.

If a form is not something that a faculty or learner will trigger themselves, program administrators can create forms and send them out to be completed via distributions. A distribution defines who or what is being assessed/evaluated, who is competing the form, and when it is to be completed. Building items and forms to use with distributions is not a requirement if you only want to use on-demand forms. For additional information on building and distributing forms, please see the Assessment and Evaluation help resources here.

For Staff and Faculty Groups to have access to the CBME features in the Distribution wizard, a developer will need to add an additional resource_type called CBME into the elentra_auth.acl_permissions table to include the organisation that has enabled CBME (if your instance of Elentra has more than one organisation) and the two groups of staff and faculty with an app_id of 1 and only a read permission.

An example of this entry for an instance where CBME is enabled in organisation_id 1 and 3:

Information to Collect Before Form Building

Before beginning to create items and build forms, confirm the following with your stakeholders:

  • whether to include form instructions (i.e., information displayed at the beginning of a form)

  • what milestone rating scale to use

  • what global entrustment rating scale to use and what the prompt for a global entrustment rating should read (note that you can have a developer configure this to be automatic if you wish)

  • whether to default any response options on items

  • whether to include prompted responses (note that as of Elentra ME 1.25 prompted response options on on-demand forms will NOT send notification to course staff or directors; only the default Concern Items appended to all CBE forms will send a notification)

  • whether to require comments for any prompted responses

General Form Information

CBME includes specific form templates to reduce the amount of work administrative staff have to do to create the assessment forms courses/programs will use. Elentra also supports generic forms (including rubrics) which can also be leveraged by the CBME tools including the individual dashboard, program dashboard and assessment plan builder. Specific details for each form type are included in other lessons but here is some general information about creating forms.

  • Form Permissions: These permissions dictate who has access to and can edit a form or form template while it is still a draft. To quickly make a form available to multiple users consider adding a program permission to the form (that will give anyone affiliated with that program (e.g. PA, PD) and with access to the administration of forms access to that form).

    • Note that a form must be permissioned to a course to be used in an on-demand workflow.

  • Form Instructions: To include instructions on a form template, look in the Form Template Information section and click the box beside 'Include Instructions.' This will open a rich text editor where you can type. What you type here will be included on all forms generated from this template. You could include specifics about the use of a form, the number of assessments a learner must complete, or even the key features of an EPA. Remember that each form produced will have the same instructions so if you include key features make sure they only relate to the applicable EPAs for the template.

  • Publish a Form: To make a form template generate forms to be available for learners or faculty to trigger you must publish the form template. Most installations of Elentra run a behind-the-scenes action to publish form templates every hour or so.

  • Editing a Form: Once a form template is published you cannot change the content of the resulting forms (you can change permissions or rearranged item order on published forms). If there is an error on a form you will need to copy the form, correct the error, and publish your new form. You can delete old forms but note that any already completed assessments will remain on the learner dashboard.