Creating Assessments
Last updated
Last updated
New in ME 1.18!
Specify gradebook assessments for specific members of a course.
Optionally indicate a grading scale for an assessment or weighted collection and decide whether to show learners their results according to the marking scheme, grading scale, or both.
Improved ability to copy course gradebooks.
Gradebooks automatically exist for courses, however they must be populated with assessments. A gradebook exists for each curriculum period associated with a course. Once you have existing assessments, you can copy and apply them to new curriculum periods as they are added.
You must have staff:admin permissions or be a program coordinator or faculty director associated with a course in order to access assessments in a course gradebook. Only staff:admins and program coordinators can add new assessments (course directors can edit existing assessments).
Navigate to Admin > Manage Courses.
Search for a course as needed.
Click the cog icon to the right of the course name and select Gradebook.
Ensure you are in the correct curriculum period and adjust using the period selector in the top right if needed.
Below the list of assessments and beside the options to delete and copy assessments, look for the Grading Scale dropdown selector.
Select the appropriate grading scale.
Note, if a grading scale is set for a course gradebook, all assessments added to the gradebook will have that grading scale preset. Users can optionally change the grading scale of a collection or assessment when it is being made.
Navigate to Admin > Manage Courses.
Search for a course as needed.
Click the cog icon to the right of the course name and select Gradebook.
Ensure you are in the correct curriculum period and adjust using the period selector in the top right if needed.
Click 'Add New Assessment'.
Fill in the required fields.
Assessment Name: Required; will display to learners and any graders associated with this assessment.
Assessment Description: Optional; will display on the edit assessment screen and will be seen by learners when reviewing or submitting an assignment.
Assessment Weighting: This can be left as 0% if an assessment carries no weight towards the final course grade.
Audience Options: Use this optional field to assign an assessment to the entire course enrolment, a course group, specific cohorts or individuals in the course, or a custom list of learners.
Click the radio button for the appropriate audience option and then select the audience using selector. Note that you can search the list of cohorts/groups/learners as needed.
If you assign the assessment to specific course groups and you want all learners in one group to have the same grade recorded, check off "Apply the same grade to all learners in the selected groups." If you use this option and an assignment drop box, one member of the group can upload the assignment and once graded, the mark will be applied to all group members.
If an assessment is assigned to a specific audience only those leaners will see the assessment and have its weight (if any) applied to their grade calculation.
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. If the assessment later has a drop box assignment added the drop box assignment will inherit the assessment due date.
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.
Characteristic: Required; this is assessment type (test, paper, oral exam, etc.). The list of assessment characteristics can be modified in Admin > System Settings. Please see details here.
Selecting different assessment characteristics will dynamically 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.
Grading Scale: Optionally set a grading scale for an assessment. If a grading scale is used, you can control how the learner will view their results (e.g. see grading scale, marking scheme, both). The option to set how learners view their results will be visible if you select "Show this Assessment in Learner Gradebook" further down the page.
Note that if a grading scale was set for the entire course gradebook, that grading scale will be selected by default for newly created assessments. Users can edit the grading scale as needed.
The list of grading scales can be configured in Admin > System Settings. Please see more detail here.
Marking Scheme: Elentra supports Pass/Fail, Percentage, Numeric and Complete/Incomplete marking schemes. Each marking scheme is stored in the database as a percentage value (e.g. P = 100, F = 0).
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.
Don’t Show this Assessment in Learner Gradebook will be selected by default. That means learners will not see this assessment, nor any mark recorded for them. 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.
Show this Assessment in Learner Gradebook should be selected if you want learners to view the assessment once it is graded.
If you choose this option, set the appropriate start and finish 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. (Note that when you view a course gradebook, a green checkmark on the far right means that an assessment is visible to learners.)
Choose how to display grades to the learner. Optionally select to show them the marking scheme, grading scale, or both.
Please note that in Elentra, by default, learners will not see their gradebook assessments until there is a grade entered for them (even if the assessment is set to display in the learner gradebook).
For this reason some organizations opt to include an Assessments page in a course website and provide an overview of the course assessment plan there.
Linking an event to an assessment in the gradebook allows you to provide data for the AAMC Curriculum Inventory Portal.
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.
This allows you to grant access to specific faculty or learners designated as TAs for a course so they can view assignments and enter assessment grades for their assigned learners. First add graders to the list, and then assign learners to the graders. Currently, each student can only be assigned 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.
Linking a gradebook assessment to an existing portfolio allows course directors, and curriculum and program coordinators to access portfolio entries while in the gradebook. This can be particularly useful if a form is also attached to the assessment and the user can see a portfolio entry and assessment form simultaneously. Linking a portfolio to a gradebook is a setting option that can be turned off if desired.
Please note that at present portfolio artifacts are not available to be viewed by individual graders (i.e., if you've added graders to a gradebook assessment). Portfolio artifacts can only be viewed by users with access to Admin > Manage Courses > Gradebook (e.g., course director, curriculum coordinator).
To link a portfolio to an assessment:
Click 'Attach Portfolio'.
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.
Select the appropriate portfolio and click 'Attach Selected Portfolio'. The name of the portfolio should display underneath the Assessment Portfolio heading.
If you've added a portfolio to a gradebook assessment but aren't seeing anything when attempting to grade it, please confirme that a) there are artifacts uploaded to the portfolio, and b) the artifacts are set to be visible/assessable in the gradebook.
There are additional database system settings that allow an organization to define who can control the visibility of portfolio artifacts in a gradebook. The options include making all artifacts assessable by default, allowing the learner to control which are assessable and allowing the advisor to control which are assessble. All three settings are enabled by default. There is an additional database setting to control whether you can view portfolio comments when accessing the portfolio via a gradebook. This setting is off by default and if you'd like it enabled you should speak to a developer.
To remove a portfolio from an assessment click 'Remove Portfolio'.
Assessment Form allows you to link an existing assessment form to the gradebook assessment. This permits 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 Evaluation section.)
Before building a form to attach to a gradebook assessment please consider how it will be used. A form attached to a gradebook assessment with no dropbox can be used by graders but will not be visible to learners (they will see their grade in the gradebook if the assessment is set to be visible). A form attached to a gradebook assessment with a dropbox can be used by graders and will be visible to learners through their My Assignments screen.
Please note ME 1.13 and higher support adding forms with freetext items and 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.
Do not include other item types like date selector, numeric answer field, or autocomplete (multiple responses) on a form to be attached to a gradebook. They will not work. (Even if it seems like the system lets you add a form with these items, and even though an admin. user can complete the form, faculty graders will not be able to use the form via My Grading Tasks
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 items on the assessment form (a free text item will have no weight). The weights should total 100%. This information is what allows the system to automatically create a grade after the form 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 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.
If you have multiple assessments in a gradebook that share multiple details (e.g. graders, groups, weight, etc.) it may be fastest to create one assessment then copy it multiple times and adjust each copy as needed to reflect the unique assessments required.
