Assessment Manager
is the LEA approved Windows software for the recording
and analysis of on-going Assessment Data in all Primary,
Secondary and special schools. It replaces the original
DOS module Assessment.
For Key Stage assessment, there is an additional
software tool called Key Stage
Manager. This module acts independently,
although it does integrate with Assessment Manager. The
module is kept separate from Assessment Manager to
enable format/operational changes that are required for
Key Stage Manager to be done without any disruption to
the other module.
Please read the section below before
continuing with Assessment Manager.
Planning Considerations
Assessment
Manager requires two elements to be defined: Aspects and Mark
sheets.
Aspects are the
criteria by which assessment will be made. Mark
sheets the device for displaying pupils names and
grades.
Whenever
a Mark or Grade representing a pupil’s achievement in
a particular aspect is entered, a record is created
containing the
Aspect, the Mark
and the Date.
The
consequence of this is that, once defined and used, an Aspect cannot be
changed or deleted because the Marks and Grades entered
under that Aspect
will also be deleted.
Mark
sheets
So Mark sheets
can be modified, deleted and recreated as often as you
like without effecting the integrity of the pupils’
Marks and Grades you have entered previously.
Whenever
a new Mark
sheet is
created containing one or more Aspect and the
Names of a Group of pupils, the previous performances of
those pupils in those Aspects, can be
displayed and modified on the new Mark
sheet.
Thus great care
should be taken in defining Aspects but you can be
fairly relaxed about creating and deleting Mark
sheets.
“Derived Aspects”
As well as “Real Results””,
Assessment Manager also provides for what may be termed
“Derived
Results”. (ie those that are calculated from “Real Results”)
Examples
of “Derived
Results” are: Total, Mean, Difference, Rank etc...
These “Derived Results” can be incorporated into Mark sheets,
but must themselves be defined as Aspects before
they can be used.
Thus:
a
“Derived Aspect”
for Total might have a valid range from 0 to 999
a “Derived
Aspect” for Difference might have a valid range from -100 to 100
a “Derived
Aspect” for Mean might have a valid range from 0.0
to 100.0
The
use made of Derived Aspects will
vary. You may define 5 different Aspects to
record the results from 5 weekly Maths tests. There is a
separate Aspect
for each Test It would then be appropriate to create a “Derived Aspect”
called Total to hold the Total Marks scored by each
pupil over the series of 5 Tests, another called Mean
and another called Rank Order. These 3 “Derived Aspects” should then be used exclusively to
hold calculations relating to the series of Tests.
In
use, they would form a permanent part of the Mark
sheet and
would be updated each time the results of the current
test were entered. As such, they would be saved along
with the “Real Results”
The
consequence of this is that the Total, Mean and Rank can
only be used for this particular Mark
sheet because
they hold data specific to these particular Maths Tests.
Thus the naming of the “Derived Aspects”
as Total, Mean and Rank is inappropriate.
It
would be better to name it 97Mathtotal so that its name
reflects its function. This will ensure that “Derived Aspects”
are not used inappropriately. It is possible to create
an Aspect called
Total which is generic and can then be used temporarily
in any Mark
sheet to
Total a set of Marks, providing the Mark
sheet is
never saved whilst it contains the Total Aspect within it.
However
the Mark
sheet can
be printed with the Total Aspect in it,
the Total Aspect column
can be removed and then the Mark
sheet saved.
There
are some Derived Aspects which can be used as masters to
clone from
