Continuous assessment - Grading with Learning outcomes

If you are using learning outcomes as a subject assessment criteria, we have developed a continuous assessment tool for assignment grading. Teachers/Educators can grade individual Learning outcomes over a term based on a non numerical achievement scale.

Changes to the grade grid

We have changed the grade grid slightly to allow for the new features to be accessible on the UI.

1. Terms are now available in a drop down menu. We have added a 'group by' function. Group your grade grid by assignment, or the new option of group by learning outcome.

2. A new header row in the grade grid will show the Learning outcome short code. You can mouse over these for for the full label description.

3. We have changed the hyperlinks of view all assignments and options to show as action buttons at the bottom of the screen.

4. When selected for the subject, the continuos assessment button will action a slide over allowing you to grade the evidences and produce a numeric average. 

Setup the Continuous assessment

Firstly make sure your achievement scale is correctly configured. You can use an existing achievement scale or create a new one, but you must have points and % Low/High assigned for the calculations to work correctly.

Go to the assignment configuration, normally found in assignment/advanced options to check on your scale settings.

You must use an achievement scale, and there needs to be points assigned to each scale.

The next step is to make sure you have learning outcomes with points assigned to your subjects. Open each Learning outcome and assign points. 

Newly created learning outcomes will automatically have 1 point assigned, whereas old learning outcomes will have to manually updated.

The learning outcomes must be added with the new assessment module, Subject specifications. ( The end of the page URL is /learning_outcomes/learning_outcome_edit.php for schools that have customised their module headings). 

If you do not use the new subject specifications module, then contact our support team. Our continuous assessment module is only available for schools using the new assessment options.

The final step is to go to subject management, select your subject and go to the assignment tab. We have added a new check box. Check the box to allow for the subject to have continuous assessment available in the assignment grade grid.

How to assess using continuous assessment on the grade grid

Lets return to the assignment grade grid. In the example below we have ordered the gird by LO, and graded the students. We can now open the continuous assessment page to start assessing the Learning outcome evidences.

Each LO assigned to the subject can be individually graded based on it's achievement scale. Teachers can mouse over the bars for a light overview of assignment and weight, and grade. The Teacher can now give a final grade for their LO's used during the assessment period. When finished the users need to validate their entry and save the page with the button in the bottom right hand side of the screen.

Note that if multiple achievement scales are attached to the subject then these will appear in the dropdown options when grading. The scale label will appear next to them, so please ensure users choose the correct scale.

The continuous average is calculated after the save and updated in the CA column. You can have a mix of classic numerical assignments running concurrently with the Learning outcomes. The average is using a normalised average based on the points assigned to the learning outcome. It does not include the weight for the individual assignment.