APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/programs/admin/ra/readme

Text File | 1990-11-25 | 14.6 KB | 328 lines

Make a back up of this disc before going any further.

It is essential that you read the following as this system is complex. The
archived file RAGEN is a genesis application explaining the system. It can
be decompressed using the !sparkplug utility on the disc.

By placing the microspell module from David Piling's spellcheck disc in the
directory help and adding the line RUN <HELP$DIR>.HELP.microspell between
the line beginning IconSprites and the line run <RA$Dir> in th e !RUN file,
on line spellcheck will be added to aid report writing. Unfortunately the
dictionary is American!

Only the tutor group 2 Reardon is present on this demo disc so click on this
on the menu.

Overview.

The system is a comprehensive aid to assessment using an Archimedes or A3000
computer. The program is based on using groups of criteria differentiated at
3 levels to assess students and generate their reports. The example on this
disc has been set up to show a model that could be used for the National
Curriculum in Science. There is complete flexibility in how the groupings
are made except that you are constrained to 6 groups with not more than 10
attainment targets in one group. The names given to the levels are variable
also.

version 1.2

25th November 1990

Some recent amendments include an option to use a majority of the criteria
statements awarded to credit a global statement or an absolute number. Click
on Majority/Absolute to toggle this. I have also made it so subject menus
are set up from the create menu option rather than having to edit the
program. You can also change the names associated with levels to anything
you think appropriate. There is also a facility for printing the numbers of
levels awarded which should help moderation. Some of these have required
drastic surgery, so please notify me of any bugs so I can put them right. It
is likely that !RunImage will be the only file changing from now on. I am
currently working on a Genesis application to describe the full workings of
the system, a sort of hypertext manual. It is in the archived file RAGEN and is fairly complete.
There has been some change to the directory structure to simplify
things. In !Clickx2, !RunImage will work from any disc/directory, but !RUN
is used to set the directory paths. If you drag this into edit, you will see
the line Set HELP$DIR :0.$. For a hard disc with everything in a directory
RA change this to :4.$.RA. URD 2RA89/90 needs changing to whatever the year
group is called. This means that if !RunImage is up-graded it can simply be
replaced without worrying about variable setting in different situations
provided !Run is right for the particular year group. Sorry if this sounds
complicated ring and I'll try to explain it better.


Records of Achievement
----------------------

The system is complex so reading this file is essential!

First have a look at the example data. (I assume knowledge of RISCOS. If you
do not have this first read your Archimedes user guide, particularly pages
3-39.) To do this open the folder 2RA89/90 and double click on !Clickx2 to
run the program. Use the mouse to select the second option, load a file,
then select Science on the next menu and choose tutor group 2 Reardon on the
next menu. Now select list file (third item on main menu) and page through
group on the sub menu. Note the blocks of criteria. The button Help (bottom
right) provides a screen of help on how to enter and access data. When any
menu option is highlighted pressing the right hand button provides a screen
of help for this option.


We will come back to the program in detail, but first some of the background.


Overview

Before you can understand how to use the records of achievement program you
need to know the task it is designed to facilitate. The idea is that
formative recording of student achievement, and summative reporting and
recording of achievement can be tackled in a holistic way in order to
improve administrative efficiency. The program is part of a continual
assessment scheme which provides targets in the form of criteria for the
students to aim at. These targets are used to help motivate students towards
what the teacher wants them to learn and also to report what has been
learned by the student.

First of all take criterion referencing as a starting point. In order to
show progression the criteria statements are grouped and differentiated at
three levels, for example NC level 3, level 4 and level 5. The groupings
are by subject and then in blocks by process with each of these blocks
divided into sub-blocks of more specific skills. Statements are provided for
each sub-block at level 3, level 4 and level 5. eg.

Science

Block 1     Block 2   Block 3                Block 4        Block 5   etc

Life       Materials  Our context  Fundamentals of Physics Communication

Variety
Process
Genetics
etc


The  blocks 1 - 5 are divided into sub-groups which are in this case
National Curriculum attainment targets such as Variety of life (AT2)etc,
with each of these sub-groups described by a statement at each of the
levels.


When say, 5 statements have been achieved at a given level, the student is
awarded the global statement for the block at this level, so a profile is
built up of levels in the block titles.

The reason that I have not stuck to the NC profile components or attainment
target model rigidly is that I believe that 2 profile components will give
an impoverished report whereas 17 attainment targets would involve reams of
paper. 6 report headings seems to me much more sensible though since we can
readily identify the attainment targets and profile components we can still
fit in with the law. You have complete flexibility in the way you group the
ATs except for the constraint of a maximum of 6 blocks and 10 ATs per block.

Automatic reports can now be printed using the global statement for each
report heading to describe a NC level for a group of ATs, together with a
"User comment".

The program

The program provides a generalised structure for the above. The user can
specify the number of blocks, the number of statements in each block and the
number of criteria for awarding global statements. She can also edit any
appropriate criteria so that the program can be used for any subjects or
combination of subjects.

Details

Directory structure

The program uses a fixed directory structure because the organisation of
data is crucial if a complex situation arises where several year groups and
several subjects are using the system.

The hard disc structure is identical to the floppy except for RA being
an extra level in the directory structure so that the hard disc root
directory is kept free from clutter. This means that subject teachers can
have their teaching groups on floppy discs and transfer the information from
these on to a whole school system on a hard disc (in the staffroom, for
example). The menu option copy to another disc is used for this purpose.
This means that networking is unneccessary and the data should be more
secure. The system should be easily adaptable to run on a network, however
if this was required, and since data files are small, Econet would work
quite quickly and efficiently. I will probably be looking into this in more
detail soon.

To use the program to globally handle all subjects
--------------------------------------------------

Make a directory called RA on the hard disc and drag the contents of this
floppy into it. Edit !Run in the !Clickx2 applications directory to set
HELP$DIR to :4.$.RA and URD to :0.$.RA.2RA89/90. Each subject has its own
folder and can be set up from the main program. You may wish to alter
2RA89/90 to 3RA90/91 in which case the name needs to be changed in the !RUN
file in !Clickx2. Notice that as long as a member of staff has a copy of the
program with an appropriate !RUN file and a folder with the group he teaches
on a floppy he can keep his records up to date. As long as he transfers the
data files to the hard disc periodically the complete view of all the
subjects will be available and this also provides a back up for the floppy
disc files. This modular structure also makes it easy to add new subjects,
but the subject menu will need to be set up correctly for all subjects
present on the disc. The statistics calculations can only be done if all the
files corresponding to the names on the subject menu are present.


On the floppy disc, sprites holds the School logo for menus (need about 8K
of spritespace using the task manager) and time the data to change the
pointer into an egg timer.

Access to the main program
--------------------------

Within the 2RA89/90 directory is the applications directory !Clickx2.
Holding down the shift key and double clicking will open this to
reveal !RUN, !RunImage the BASIC program which controls everything and
!sprites which just holds the !Clickx2 icon. Lev_nam is a file which
holds the names of the levels used in the program, subfile the subject
names for the subject menu, TG file the data for the tutor menus and
time the refifinition of the mouse pointer to an egg timer. If you
modify the program, say for year 1 you simply need to save the new
version in a !CLICKx2 applications directory with the name !RUNIMage.
Modifications that are likely to be needed are.

School title in PROCheader around line 22670
School logo in sprites (use !Paint)


The rest of the system is set up from the menus while the program is
running. To set up your own system, first take a blank disc and copy
everything on to it. Now go through the create menu options. (remember
there is help on each option by pressing the right hand button).

Use set up tutor menu to set up the teaching group menus to be used in the
program. The data for these will be stored in TGFILE. We use tutors surnames
for teaching groups so the system is designed to use the full name on the
menus and an abbreviated form for internal use by the program. Just follow
the screen prompts. If teaching takes place in sets you will need to use
teaching group names instead of tutor groups. There is a data space
particularly for designating sets but this has not so far been developed.

Now set up the assessment structure. This can be done for as many subjects
as there is space for on the disc, but it is probably best to set up
individual subjects on separate discs. Indeed, if several teachers are
involved with a subject each should have his own disc with the relevant
files on it. The data structures are deliberately modular to facilitate
this. Files and directories are created automatically.

Now set up your teaching group file of names. In order to facilitate data
entry it is assumed that you will enter pupils in blocks by sex. M for male
say then all the boys names. The option C to change enables you to type F
for female before entering all the girls. It doesn't matter which is entered
first, but M and F are important as they are used in the report generator to
decide whether to print he, she etc. Names should consist of a surname
followed by a first name separated by 1 space all upper case. The program
will translate this into lower case with appropriate capitals for reports
etc. MCDONALD would be printed as Mcdonald whereas MC DONALD will be printed
as McDonald. This is an effort to produce consistency in the format names
are printed in. Problems may arise with students with the same name. You
must make the program able to differentiate between 2 John Smiths, by
for example entering one as John and the other as Johnny. None British
names such as Pak Do Ok will also be a problem. It should not be too
difficult to modify PROCmcetc and PROCcheckcase to cater for other
possibilities and I am willing to help anyone with genuine interest in
using the system.

Editing criteria. The next task is to enter the criteria associated
with each block title for each subject. The number of the sub-block
followed by the level abbreviation is entered for each criterion and a
header and descriptor entered for each. 40 characters is the maximum
for the header, 200 for the descriptor. Look at those in the example
file to see the suggested layout. Access to entering data is by
clicking on the appropriate button (lower right of the screen) and
typing the header or descriptor as appropriate followed by <return>.
The usual BBC cursor editing facility is available for editing
statements.

Global statements are entered in much the same way though substitution
characters are allowed so that reports are more personal. I CAN'T STRESS
ENOUGH THE NEED TO CHECK PUNCTUATION AND SPELLING OF GLOBAL STATEMENTS. Since
these go on every report a mistake will require all reports to be
re-printed! Do not insert any extra spaces to prevent words being split
across lines. The report formatter will take care of this and you should
type the criteria statements (and globals) exactly as if it was one
continuous line ignoring the fact that some words will be broken across
lines. Substitution characters at the beginning of a sentence should be
preceded by a space so that the program knows to give them a capital letter
when printing.

Load file - does this!

List file

Options are explained by program help files

Whole file -currently inoperative but can produce a full year group list if
you merge all the tutor group files together.

Page through group is used for main data entry and viewing and will be the
most often used part of the program by most people. Read the help file from
the screen help button.

The amendment menu allows you to change most of the data structures.
Deleting blocks of criteria needs care as only the end block can be deleted.
Deleting statements is also a limited option.

The report generator assumes you connect your computer to an Epson
compatible printer. We use a laserjet printer with Epson emulation.
This gives good quality copy with a complete group's reports produced
in about 5 mins. A summary of the levels awarded is printed on the
screen at the end of the print run and this can be used to aid
moderation. I may do a system to set up a file to import into
Impression for more versatile styling using the DDF but this depends
on time.

Finally the system is quite complex. You are free to copy and modify
the program as much as you like I will supply telephone support to
initial users free, in order to finish debugging and improving the
software. However, if a lot of people become involved I may have to
invoke a a registration fee of say £10 per annum in order to pay for
administration. I will also try to supply registered users with any
up-grades or helpful utilities which I may program from time to time
for media costs. It is not my intention to profit from this, but it is
very difficult marketing and maintaining software on a part-time
basis!

Write to

Ian Lynch
1 Melford
off Buckingham Rd
Tamworth
Staffs
B79 7UX

or ring 0827 62018