Creating Assessments
Gradebooks automatically exist for specific courses and curriculum periods, however they must be populated with assessments. Once you have existing assessments, you can copy and apply them to new curriculum periods.
You must have staff:admin permissions or be a program coordinator or director associated with a course in order to access and add assessments to a course gradebook.
How to create a new gradebook assessment
Navigate to Admin>Manage Gradebook.
Search for or click on the name of the course/program you want to work with.
Make sure that you are in the correct Curriculum Period, and adjust it if necessary.
Click 'Add New Assessment'.
Fill in the required fields.
Assessment Details
Assessment Name: This is a required field and will display to learners and any graders associated with this assessment.
Assessment Description: This is an optional field. The description will display on the edit assessment screen but isn't frequently seen by learners or faculty.
Assessment Weighting: If your course has a number of mandatory assessments that require satisfactory completion and result in a Pass/Fail grade, you can leave this as 0. After inputting all the assessments for a course, the total weight should be 100% (unless you have only required assessments that result in a pass/fail course grade).
Notify if grade is below: Use this feature to automatically send an email to the selected audience if students score below the designated threshold. Check the box on the left to enable this feature. Enter a threshold (e.g. 65%) and click 'Select Who Gets Notified' to add the name(s) of people to notify. The options available will be based on the course contacts (e.g. course director, curriculum coordinator, and associated faculty). If no options appear, make sure the course has course contacts on the Course Setup page. Note that you can add multiple people to the list. To remove someone from the list, click the red minus button beside a name.
Assessment Due Date: This is not a required field but if used will create a due date visible to learners.
Learners are required to complete this assessment: This creates a flag in the database for this assessment but does not impact the learner's experience.
Link existing online quizzes: See details on the Gradebook>Attach Quiz page. More details about creating quizzes can be found in the Quizzes help section.
Link existing online exams: See details on the Gradebook>Attach Exam page. More details about creating exams can be found in the Exam help section.
Characteristic: This is assessment type (test, paper, oral exam, etc.) and is a required field. If your organization needs to customize the list of options, you can do so by navigating to Admin>Manage Settings>Assessment Types (this is also where you can map assessment types to Medbiquitous assessment types).
Different assessment characteristics will open additional fields:
Track Late Submissions: This adds a late submission column that allows you to identify students who have submitted assessments late with a checkmark. This will be visible in the course gradebook.
Track Resubmissions: This adds a resubmission column that allows you to identify the number of times a student had to resubmit an assignment.
Extended Options: This allows you to define the type of questions used in the assessment. This stores information but is not currently used in reporting, nor is it visible to learners.
Marking Scheme: Elentra supports Pass/Fail, Percentage, Numeric and Complete/Incomplete marking schemes. The numeric field allows you to create a denominator so you can enter scores like 8/10 or 13/17. Enter the maximum points possible for the assessment.
Assessment Type: Formative and Summative are the options. Typically, formative assessment is to monitor student learning and provide ongoing feedback, and summative assessment captures overall student learning at the end of an instructional unit. You may wish to check with your institution’s student assessment coordinator or education consultant to clarify how your institution uses these terms. The number of formative and summative assessments in a course is reported by course in the Assessment Summary Report.
Narrative assessment: Check this off if students receive written feedback for this assessment. This information is reported by course in the Assessment Summary Report.
Self-assessment: Check this off if students are assessing themselves.
Group assessment: Check this off if you want to have groups of students submit the same assignment and be graded together. See details on the Gradebook>Group Assessments page).
Assessment visibility: If you select “Don’t Show this Assessment in the Learner Gradebook” learners will not see their grade until you change the permission. This can be useful if you’d like to enter grades but need approval from someone before the grades can be made visible to students. If you select “Show this Assessment”, you should set the appropriate start and end times. Students will be able to see this assessment during the active date range. If you enter grades after the designated start time, students will see their grades immediately when you save your work.
Assessment Event
Linking an event to an assessment in the gradebook allows you to provide data for the AAMC Curriculum Inventory Portal.
From the Edit Assessment page of any gradebook entry, click 'Attach Learning Event'.
Begin to type the learning event name and click on the appropriate event when you see it. You will only be able to pick from events associated with the specific course/program you’re working on. If an event you expected to see is not visible, check that the event is assigned to the course you are in, and that you are working in the correct curriculum period.
Click 'Attach Learning Event'. The event should now display on the Edit Assessment page. When you visit the event page as an admin., you'll see the event type displayed in the event information overview in the top left. You can also link to the assessment from there.
Note that you can only link an assessment to one event.
Assessment Graders
This allows you to grant access to specific faculty so they can view assignments and enter assessment grades for their assigned learners. First you add graders to the list, and then you assign learners to the graders. Currently, each student can only be added to one grader.
To add graders:
Begin to type a grader name into the search field and when matches appear, click on the appropriate name and select Add.
You may add multiple graders to one assessment.
Note that to add a student grader to an assessment and have them successfully access their grading tasks, the student must be listed as a Teaching Assistant on the Course Contact list managed on the course setup tab via Admin > Manage Courses. (The user interface in the gradebook will appear to let you add a student not assigned as a TA to the assessment, but the user won't be able to access the course via My Grading Tasks.)
If you assign multiple graders to an assessment you can distribute learners to the graders randomly or manually. (Note that if you have set an assessment as a group assessment the interface will look slightly different. Please see more details on the Group Assessments page.)
To randomly assign learners to graders click the blue “Randomly Distribute Learners to Graders” button.
To manually assign learners to graders, click the checkbox beside multiple learner names and click 'Assign Selected to Grader'.
In the popup window, click the checkbox beside the appropriate grader name click 'Assign Learner'.
The selected learners should appear beside the grader name in the Grader/Assigned Learners table on the left.
To delete a learner from a graders list, click the red minus icon.
To delete a grader, check off beside the grader name and click the "Remove Selected Graders" button. If a grader you remove had learners assigned to him/her, those learners will automatically return to the Learners list on the right.
Assessment Portfolio: How to allow graders access to portfolio entries from the gradebook
Linking a gradebook assessment to an existing portfolio allows graders to access portfolio entries while in the gradebook. This can be particularly useful if a form is also attached to the assessment and the grader can see a portfolio entry and assessment form simultaneously.
To link a portfolio to an assessment:
Click 'Attach Portfolio'.
Select the appropriate portfolio and click 'Attach Selected Portfolio'. The name of the portfolio should display underneath the Assessment Portfolio heading.
If no Portfolios appear for you to select, make sure you are working in the correct curriculum period and that the affiliated cohort has an active Portfolio.
To remove a portfolio from an assessment click 'Remove Portfolio'.
Assessment Form: How to provide a form for graders to fill in and autopopulate grades
Assessment Form allows you to link an existing assessment form to the gradebook assessment. This can permit online, electronic grading by faculty. (If you need to create a form navigate to Admin>Assessment and Evaluation>Forms. Please see more detail in the Assessment and Evaulation section.)
Please note ME 1.13 supports adding forms with rubric items to gradebook assessments. If you add a rubric item to a form, please ensure you have made a grouped item (even if it is just one line). A form with just a single rubric attribute attached will not display properly when attached to the gradebook.
Also, you cannot include other item types like free text comments, date selector or numeric answer field on a form to be attached to a gradebook. If you need to enable commenting by graders, allow for comments on your rubric items. Do not add a free text comment item to the form. We aim to support the use of stand alone free text comments on forms attached to gradebooks in ME 1.14.
To provide a form for graders to use in the gradebook:
Click 'Attach Assessment Form'.
Begin to type the form title and options should appear. Click on the form you wish to attach and click 'Attach Assessment Form'.
The assessment form will now appear on the assessment screen.
You must indicate a score for each possible response on a rubric and give a weight for each item on the assessment form. The weights should total 100%. This information is what allows the system to automatically create a grade after a rubric is complete.
Click 'Save'. The form will be attached to the assessment and you'll be directed to the main Grade Assessment page where you can input grades.
To remove an attached assessment form, click the red "Remove Form" button.
You must have permission to access the form you are attempting to attach to a gradebook. To manage form permissions you need to access and edit the form in Admin>Assessment and Evaluation.
Assessment Objectives: How to assign curriculum tags to an assessment
Assessment Objectives allows you to map anything in your Curriculum Tags sets to an assessment. The objectives are hidden by default so access this feature by clicking the greyed out Assessment Objectives heading.
If curriculum tags are assigned to the course and context based linking is off, the curriculum tags assigned to a course will automatically appear for quick selection.
To select applicable curriculum tags from the assigned course objectives, click the checkbox beside each desired tag.
If you need to access additional curriculum tags, click the green "Map Additional Objectives" button. Click through the curriculum tag set to the required tag and tick off the small box beside the curriculum tag.
Assigned curriculum objectives and MCC presentations (two curriculum tag sets) are reported by course via the Assessment Objective Summary report.
Pick Draft or Publish to indicate whether you want to finalize the assessment or leave it in draft mode. Once published, an assessment can still be edited, however if it is already shown in a learner gradebook, learners may see any changes made.
Click Save.
By default, when you save your work the system will redirect you to the Grade Assessments page where you can input student marks depending on your user permissions. To select a different destination after saving use the dropdown menu immediately to the left of the blue "Save" button.
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