Assessment Authoring is the process of developing an assessment task. aXcelerate’s Online Assessments feature enables you to create a range of assessment tasks to incorporate with your courses or deliver as standalone assessments. Students can undertake assessment tasks such as quizzes, marking criteria assessments, observation checklists or RPL evidence assessments. Students can then submit their assessment responses and assessors can mark the task and provide feedback to the student.
Assessments
Note: We recommend only having one tab open to the Assessment Authoring page at once or refreshing your page when going between tabs. This will ensure that there are no errors caused by editing already saved and published data.
Create a new assessment task
Creating your assessment task is the first step in using the Online Assessments Feature. It is at this step that you will select your assessment type, select or enter your default values, and enter Overview, Student, and Assessor information.
- Click Create New Assessment
- Enter your assessment Task Name
- Select your assessment Type
- Enter your default Max Attempts
- Enter your default Passing Percentage
- Enter any other applicable information
- Click the Save icon
The assessment Overview is typically information about the assessment that is provided to students ahead of time and will be made available to students via the learner portal based on the Access Overview date that has been set up for the assessment.
Student information is displayed to the student at the time that they are undertaking the online assessment (i.e. this relies on the Access Start Date).
Assessor information is only shown to assessors when they are marking the assessment (or, in the case of an observation checklist being marked submitted via the trainer app). This information will be displayed to assessors as additional instructions that are not visible to the student.
Tip: The fields in this step can all be changed once you have created your assessment while your assessment in the draft state.
Note: Assessment task names must not exceed 100 Characters.
Edit your assessment
Once you have created your assessment task, you will then be able to edit this while it is in the draft state. The editing view will allow you to add and manage assessment items and your assessment information.
- Locate and hover over your Assessment Task
- Click the Edit icon
- Make any applicable changes
- Click the Save icon
Tip: Click the Task Mapping icon to go back to the Assessment Authoring and Mapping area.
Save changes to your assessment
- Locate and hover over your Assessment Task
- Click the Edit icon
- Click the Save button
Note: After making changes to an assessment, you must complete this step.
Preview your assessment
Previewing your assessment allows you to see what the student will see prior to publishing the assessment. This negates some of the need to publish and test your assessment manually.
- Locate and hover over your Assessment Task
- Click the Edit icon
- Click the Preview button
Tip: Although this is a very useful tool, it is a simulation of what the student will see. As such, we recommend testing your final 'draft' manually by enrolling a test student prior to enrolling your students.
Duplicate your assessment
The ability to duplicate your assessment allows you to quickly and easily create a copy of an existing assessment to modify. This tool is particularly useful when you have published an assessment, but would like to change it.
- Locate and hover over your Assessment Task
- Click the Duplicate icon
- Enter a new Assessment Name
- Click Submit
Tip: If you would like to keep the same mapping for the new 'version' of your assessment, tick the Copy Mapping checkbox prior to clicking submit. This is particularly useful if you are duplicating an assessment as a form of version control.
Delete your assessments
- Locate and hover over your Assessment Task
- Click the Delete icon
- Click Ok
Warning: An assessment task with instances (enrolments or linkages to other areas of the system) cannot be deleted. In these instances, we recommend archiving your assessment to ensure data hygiene.
Publish your assessment
Publishing an assessment will allow you to enrol students into this assessment and link it to your class or workshop instances.
- Locate and hover over your Assessment Task
- Click the Edit icon
- Click the Publish button
Tip: You can still make changes to a published assessment, however, for any major changes you must duplicate the assessment and create a new 'version'.
Edit a published assessment
Once you have published an assessment, you have the option to force this back to a draft state to make changes. If your assessment does not have any instances created (eg, standalone assessments), you will be able to completely force the assessment back to a draft state. However, if your assessment is linked to an instance, you will still be able to make updates to the assessment, however, this will be limited. You will not be able to add new items, rearrange items, change the score/marking scale or change the question type (if a Quiz assessment).
- Locate and hover over your Assessment Task
- Click the Edit icon
- Click the Draft button
OR
Click the Edit Override button - Edit and make any applicable changes
- Click Save
Tips: If using the draft button, after saving, click the publish button again to republish the assessment.
The Edit Override button will only appear for assessments linked to an instance. This will only allow you to make minor changes for this reason.
Note: If using the Edit Override option, after step 3, click Confirm to proceed.
Warning: We do not recommend using the Edit Override option for any large changes. This is intended to fix spelling mistakes and to make minor adjustments. Any changes made with this tool will affect all enrolments linked to the assessment.
Create a New Assessment Version
After an Assessment is published, the changes that can be made to it in the authoring area are limited. Creating a new version of an assessment allows you to have full editing control and make substantial changes without needing to create a new Assessment.
- View a Published Assessment
- Click Open in Authoring
- Click on the Version Number
- Click Create New Version
- Set the New Version Number
- Click Create
Tip: Enabling Copy Assessment Mapping will ensure that all of the Assessment Mapping configuration that was created for this Assessment is applied to the new version of the Assessment.
Note: At the point of publishing a new Assessment Version, the system will check for all Classes using the old version and move their instance to the new version. However, in order for class enrolments to be moved to the new version, that class must have an instance where none of the learners have started their attempts. If any learners have started the assessment, it will result in the whole instance for that class not being moved to the new version. This is for data integrity purposes so that the class is not split into two.
View Assessment Version History
When viewing an Assessment in the Authoring interface, you are able to view earlier versions of the Assessment and a history of the changes. This includes when they were created, who created them and some high-level information on changes made to the assessment.
- View a Published Assessment
- Click Open in Authoring
- Click on the Version Number
- Click on Version History
Archive your assessment
Archiving an assessment allows you to manage your assessment and maintain data hygiene. It also allows you to retain an assessment history, which is useful in audit situations.
- Locate and hover over your Assessment Task
- Click the Edit icon
- Click the Archive button
Tip: To view your archived assessments, click the Archived checkbox from the assessment authoring page.
Restore an archived assessment
Once you have archived an assessment, you have the option to restore this to a published state again if required.
- Locate and hover over your Assessment Task
- Click the Edit icon
- Click the Restore button
Add a section
Assessment sections allow you to group assessment questions. This can be particularly useful with a larger assessment or an observation style assessment where there are different sections/areas to observe.
- Locate and hover over your Assessment Task
- Click the Edit icon
- Click the Add Section button
- Enter a Section Name
- Enter a section description if applicable
- Click Submit
Note: The section name and description will display for the student when they are undertaking the assessment if the assessment type is QTI Quiz or RPL Evidence.
Delete a section
- Locate and hover over your Assessment Task
- Click the Edit icon
- Click on the Section you would like to delete
- Click the Delete icon
Note: If you delete a section containing questions, this will delete all of the questions contained in the section.
Warnings: Once you have deleted a section it cannot be retrieved.
Add a question
The questions in your assessment are what your students will have to respond to or what your trainer will have to mark your students on.
- Locate and hover over your Assessment Task
- Click the Edit icon
- Click the Add Question button
- Enter your Question
- Enter your applicable Answers or Marking Scale
- Enter any other applicable fields if applicable
- Click Save Question
Note: The question title will display for the student when they are undertaking the assessment if the assessment type is QTI Quiz or RPL Evidence.
Update assessment task information
If you do not set your assessment task level information (eg, assessment overview) upon creation, this can still be accessed once you have created the assessment.
- Locate and hover over your Assessment Task
- Click the Edit icon
- Click the Settings Cog icon
- Make any applicable changes
- Click Save Settings