This article provides a step-by-step guide for setting up assessments in Arbor for secondary schools. It outlines the process of defining assessment frameworks, checking assessable courses, adding assessments to the annual policy, and recording assessment data. Additionally, it explains how to set targets and input marks for various assessment types, ultimately leading to an effective analysis of student performance.
Let's take a look at how to get your assessments set up in Arbor. You can then add baselines and targets (to help track student progress) before handing them over to student's teachers to input their grades.
How long will it take?
This is an estimate for each assessment set-up. The more assessments you have, the longer the setup, and the more time teachers will need to spend recording marks.
- Check your Grade Sets - 5 minutes
- Add the assessment to your framework - 5 minutes
- Mark courses as assessable - 1 minute
- Check your Assessment Periods - 5 minutes
- Add the assessment to your policy - 5 minutes
- Set targets - 15 minutes
How do we set up assessments in Arbor?
We offer two pathways for setting up assessments in Arbor.
Out-of-the-box frameworks
We’ve created four ready-to-go assessment approaches - see how to set them up with our Assessment templates for Secondaries:
Set up your own assessments
Click the links below for helpful articles on how to set up each type of assessment:
The Assessment Framework includes all the supporting information that makes up an assessment, such as the grades that are used or the name of the assessment. You can manage grade point scales and grade sets, assessments that can be added to the Annual Policy and the marksheet settings such as which columns should be shown.
As Assessment Frameworks are typically only created once and last for a number of academic years (grade sets and the course name rarely change), this part of the assessments is separated out for a simpler yearly setup process.
Go to Students > Assessments > Assessment Framework > Assessment Catalogue to see all the assessments available at your school to run, and add new assessments.
Once you have defined your Assessment Framework, you'll need to make sure you will be able to assess all the courses that should be assessed from Students > Assessments > Annual Policy > Assessable Courses.
The Annual Policy includes all aspects of assessments that are specific to an academic year, such as which assessments students are taking and Data Collection dates. In this section, you will also be able to manage your assessment periods, assessable courses, curriculum expectations, and schoolwide targets for the year. You'll need to add assessments to your Annual Policy every year to select which of your assessments you'll be using.
Go to Students > Assessments > Annual Policy > Manage Assessments to add your assessments.
Recording assessment data
Once your assessments have been set up, you can input marks and start to analyse results.
To set targets:
- You can manually set targets from the Baselines & Targets page by adding them or importing them.
- You can also set up Attainment or Progress Target rules to automatically set targets for groups of students within an assessment so that these don’t have to be set manually.
You can see how to add these here: Adding and locking Baselines and Targets
You can edit your Target Judgement rules to colour code your mark sheets depending on how you students are doing in their assessments relative to their targets.
The way you can enter or Import marks and targets for Summative, Progress 8 or Ad Hoc assessments are accessible in different ways by different people:
- How admins can enter baselines
- How admins can access the marksheet and input marks
- How teachers can access the marksheet and input marks
- Entering marks for Ad Hocs
Once your marks have been put in, view analysis for Summative, Ad Hoc and Progress 8 assessments in the Analysis section.
What's next?
So you've set up your assessments, you've got teachers to start entering marks and you're wondering what else you can do with them? Jump to the next part of your journey to Boost your school to the next level where you'll see how to:
- Report on and analyse your assessment data effectively
- Customise your marksheets
- Bring assessment data into other areas of Arbor
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