Skills Assessments have recently received a series of enhancements and updates to improve functionality and ease of use. This article provides a summary of each change that has been made to DnA Skills Assessments, and provides resources to learn more.
Assessment Creation
- With the enhancement of the Skills Assessment creation process, the old Skills Assessment creator has been fully deprecated.
- The Academic Year filter is now editable after assessment creation, regardless of whether or not the Skills Assessment contains student data.
- Performance Bands can now be linked to Skills Assessments and used in reporting.
To learn more about creating Skills Assessments, take a look at Create a Skills Assessment.
Question Creation
- The Basic and Advanced Question types now offer new Background options, including a white or black background, or no background for the default grey.
- The Advanced Question type Drawing Tools have been expanded to include Triangle, Decagon, Diamond, and Star shapes, as well as a Border Tool.
- Font options have been expanded from 5 fonts to a total of 13 fonts, and Font Size options have been expanded from a maximum point size of 96pts to 200pts.
- A new Image Library has been added to the Image Tool functions, allowing users to access an organization-wide image folder, and to create, organize, and share personal uploaded images and folders.
A new option to add an Introduction Page to Skills Assessments has been added as an Advanced Question feature. The Introduction Page is intended to allow administrators to give instructions for teachers on how to administer the assessment to students.
The optional Introduction Page, if included in a Skills Assessment, will always appear as the first item on the assessment, regardless of if it is the last question created, or if question randomization has been enabled. The item cannot be scored, and will not display as a question on reports. Only one Introduction Page can be added to any Skills Assessment; after one has been created, the option will appear disabled.
To learn more about creating Skills Assessment questions, take a look at Add Skills Assessment Questions.
Administration
When filtering students to administer Skills Assessments, the Student Scope Selector is now sticky. When users leave the filtered student list page, and later return to the same page, the same filters will still be selected.
When administering a Skill Assessment by Testing Specific Questions, the list of questions now includes the date and time the question was last attempted, if applicable, color coding indicating if the question was marked as correct or incorrect, and any Question Groups the question is a part of.
While administering a Skills Assessment to a student, each question now features a space to add Comments. These are unique per student, per question.
Within Skills Assessment administration, the Review, Finish/Save, and Exit buttons and messaging have been updated to use distinctive coloring, and notify when changes have not been saved.
Linked Assessments are now accessible from the administration Finished page. Once one Skills Assessment has been administered to a student, a Linked Assessment can be selected from the Finished page, and immediately administered to the same student.
After administering a Skills Assessment to one student, selecting Next Student now navigates to the administration page for the same Skills Assessment for the next student on the list, sorted alphabetically.
To learn more about administering Skills Assessments, take a look at Administer a Skills Assessment.
Reporting
- The Skills Assessment Overview page now features a new Performance tab.
- Overall Assessment Performance statistics are displayed with performance bands, if a performance band has been linked to the assessment.
- Question Groups and Linked Assessments overview statistics are also displayed with performance bands, if applicable.
A Skills Assessment Participation Report has been added.
- When navigating from a Skills Assessment to the Parent Letter report, all Linked Assessments linked to that Skills Assessment automatically populate within the report.
- Attempt Details are also now available to include in the Parent Letter report.
- Mastery details will now display for each Skills Assessment included in the Parent Letter report.
- Dependent on the settings and filters selected, Attempt Details can be included to display Correct and Incorrect Responses and % Mastery.
- Attempt Details options are now available for the Skills Assessment Student List report.
- Comments can now also be included on the Student List report.
- If a Performance Band has been linked to the Skills Assessment, the Student List report now displays the Performance Band key, and the % Earned is color-coded accordingly.
New Skills Assessment metadata columns are available to add to custom reports, including:
- Attempts Number Correct
- Attempts Number Possible
- Attempts Date and Time
- Attempts Question Comments
- Assessment Owner Name
- Correct Responses
- Incorrect Responses
To learn more about Skills Assessments prebuilt reports, take a look at Reports: Skills Assessments; to learn more about custom reports, take a look at Create a Custom Report from a Skills Assessment.
Next Steps
To dig deeper into creating, managing, administering, and analyzing Skills Assessments, take a look at the other articles in the Skills Assessments manual.