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.

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, noting the following: Assessment Details:

  • 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-This feature triggers an automatic email to the selected audience if students score below the designated threshold.

  • 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.). You can customize this list by navigating to Admin>Manage Settings>Assessment Types. When doing so you can map your institution’s assessment types to Medbiquitous assessment types or your institution can use only the Medbiquitous assessment types.

  • Selecting certain 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 in the assessment.

  • Marking Scheme-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 evaluates student learning at the end of an instructional unit. You may wish to check with your institution’s student assessment coordinator or educational consultant to clarify how your institution uses these terms. This information is reported by course in the Assessment Summary Report.

  • Narrative assessment-Check off if students receive written feedback for this assessment. This information is reported by course in the Assessment Summary Report.

  • Self-assessment-Check off if students are assessing themselves.

  • Group assessment-Check off if you want to have groups of students submit the assessment together and be graded together (more detail on group assignments is in the Group Assessments help section).

  • 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”, set the appropriate start and end times. If you enter grades after the designated start time, students will see their grades immediately when you save your work.

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.

How to manage graders and learners

Add any graders who will be responsible for grading the assessment or portions of the assessment. Begin to type a grader name into the search field and matches will appear, click on the appropriate name and select Add. You may add multiple graders to one assessment.

If you assign multiple graders to an assessment you can distribute learners to the graders randomly or by manually. To randomly assign learners to graders click the blue “Randomly Distribute Learners to Graders” button. To manually assign learners to graders, check off beside multiple learner names, click “Assign to Grader”, select the appropriate name and click Assign Learner. Note: Since the curriculum period is defined, the learners are pre-populated from the course enrolment information. You can only assign a learner to one grader. To delete a grader, check off beside the grader name and click the Remove Selected Graders button.

To assign groups of leaners to a grader please see the Group Assessment help section.

You can link a gradebook assessment to an existing portfolio requirement. Doing this will allow graders to access a learner portfolio via the gradebook and if a form has also been attached to the assessment will permit a grader to view the portfolio entry and complete the assessment form simultaneously on the page.

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.)

  • 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 weights for the items on the assessment form and enter scores as required by different item types.

  • Click 'Attach Assessment'.

  • To remove an attached assessment form, click the red 'Remove Form' button.

How to assign curriculum tags to an assessment

Assessment Objectives allows you to map learning objectives from the Curriculum Tags sets to the assessment. The objectives are hidden by default so access this feature by clicking the faint gray plus box to the left of the Assessment Objectives title.

  • The curriculum tags assigned to a course will automatically appear for selection.

  • To assign curriculum tags to this assessment, tick off 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 hidden and editable. Once published, an assessment can still be edited, however if it is already visible, learners may see any changes made.

  • Click Save.

By default, when you save your work the system will redirect you to the Grade assessment page where you can input student marks. To select a different destination after saving use the dropdown menu immediately to the left of the blue Save button.

How to copy and modify an existing gradebook

Before you start, ensure that the period (e.g., Sept. 1, 2017 – Dec. 31, 2017) you want to create a new gradebook for exists and has an audience (e.g., a cohort). Navigate to Admin>Manage Course>Setup to review and adjust this as needed. If a required period is unavailable this can be modified from Admin>Manage Settings>Curriculum Layout.

  • Navigate to Admin>Manage Gradebook and scroll down to the relevant course.

  • Open the gradebook you plan to copy.

  • Check that you’re using the appropriate period by looking at and adjusting as needed the Period dropdown menu in the top right.

  • Select the assignments you want to copy by ticking the small box beside the assessment title.

  • When prompted, select the new target audience (which is defined by a period so that’s what you’ll see as your options) and press Copy Assessments.

  • NOTE: When you copy assessments, they will maintain the same date parameters, so make sure that you adjust the dates. Other things like who is notified if grade doesn’t meet threshold, learners assigned to groups, etc. will also have to be updated.

How to manage existing assessments in a gradebook

Collections - The collections tool allows you to group multiple assessments together in a course gradebook assessment list allowing for quick review of learner performance (e.g., all quizzes will show up beside each other).

  • Tick the small boxes beside the assessments you want to group together.

  • Click on “Add to Collection” at the bottom of the gradebook screen.

  • Provide a title and optional description for the collection and click Add to Collection.

  • To add additional assessments to an existing collection, tick the small box to the left of the assessments you want to add. Click on Add to Collection. Under Assessment Collection use the dropdown menu to select the appropriate collection title and click Add to Collection.

To deleted a collection, tick the small box beside the collection name and then click the red “Empty Collection” button at the bottom of the page.

Deleting an Assessment To delete an existing assessment, navigate to Admin>Manage Gradebook. Scroll down and click on a course/program name. When you see the list of existing assessments check off the box beside the assessment you want to delete and then hit the red “Delete Selected” button at the bottom of the page.

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