Internal Assessment vs Markbook/Grade Scales

Administration
1

Hi Ross, 

I am a bit confused. I am trying to understand how the internal assessment is tied into the markbook. For eg. I have term grade and exam grade  for each subject set up along with the students grades and i can view those information in the markbook view. But I am not understanding the use of the internal assessment and how to tie it back to the markbook.

2

Willpro, at the moment there is no link between the two: Markbook is used by teachers to record progress in their class. Internet Assessment is used at the whole school level to record student progress at certain intervals during student life. I do have a school that is looking at tying the two together, and introducing weightings into the Markbook however. My own school is not very grade-focused, so we did not build the system in this way. Hope this helps.

3

Whta is he difference between the Formal Assessment found under the Assess menu and Formal Assessment found under School Admin?

4

Formal Assessment under Assess is the front end that users visit to use the Formal Assessment functionality. The section under School Admin is where settings are put in place by admins to control the module. Gibbon generally follows this system across the board, except for non-core modules.

Ross

5

Hi Ross, 

I am at the point where i need a little more info. I have set up the markbook with term grades and exam grades for several subjects over the first two terms but now I am at the stage of trying to input some data into the internal assessment.
I notice as default there are expected, predicted & targeted grades and the ability to add other targets. How would you advice me to proceed?

6

Willpro,

You are referring to the column types: you can adjust these at Admin > School Admin in the main menu and then Formal Assessment Settings in the module menu. Once you have the types of assessments that you want listed in there, you can start adding columns, which teachers can then fill in.

Thanks,

Ross

7

Thanks for replying. The parts I am having difficulty with is 

(1) Can we use Term Exam/ End of  year Final exams in those columns within the internal assessments or just confine Term/Final Year Exams to the Markbook? 

(2) What are targeted, predicted grades etc and what is the proper way of setting it up? 

(3) What information am i pulling from these columns?

Sorry for my naivety?

8

Willpro

1) There are separate settings for the Type value in the Markbook and in Internal Assessment, but there is no reason you cannot set them to have some of the same values in each. The advantage of Internal Assessment is that fewer users can set up columns, so let’s you be more consistent with your data.

2) Terms like “Target grade”, “predicated grade”, etc, mean different things in different schools…but as above, you can change these to fit the needs of your school. Just go to Admin > School Admin in the main menu, and then Formal Assessment Settings in the module menu.

3) ?? Not sure what you mean here. Can you tell me more?

Ross

9

Thanks for your response. 

Re: item 3. I am just wondering if the internal assesment shows up in the graph or how is it tied to the data export analysis? 
You mentioned advantage of the internal assessment can you expound further?

10

It shows in the graph, and optionally in the data export, depending on how you set it up.

The Markbook allows subject teachers to create their own columns, which is great for recording and reporting of class results. However, the Internal Assessments section is designed so only leaders/administrators create columns, and teachers enter the data: the result is more consistent columns, and less work for teachers.

11

Hi Ross,

Thanks for being patient with me.

I am able to see the graphs but to export as data points to excel I am seeing these error code:

12

Willpro,

I cannot replicate this error in v12, so it has either been fixed since v11 was released, or is specific to your setup. Are you sure your timezone value in System Admin is correct?

For production I would advise turning of such warnings and notices: they are not serious, and we generally fix those that reported pretty quickly. But they do mess up the interface!

Thanks,

Ross

13

Ross I am only seeing this warning when I am in the Home - Tracking - Data Points - Export to excel


My settings as seen in php.ini are:

max_input_vars=5000
max_file_uploads=50


ini_set(‘display_errors’, 1);

error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE or less aggressive);


<pre style="font-size: 11px;"><br>
14

Yup, that is where I was looking. For production, set display errors to 0 or off.

15

Hi Ross, 

Tried both options but to no avail

16

Hi Ross, 


The problem was with my hosting company as you suggested. Seems like I have to move over to greengeeks.

I will be trying to explore these data points and see how it works?

Thank you very much

17

Willpro,

No worries. Amazon’s AWS gives you a relatively cheap VPS solution (although cost scales with usage, first year is virtually free), which gives you control of your own OS…although no support in terms of what you do with your own OS!

Ross

18

Ross, at my level I would need all the support when it comes to OS