Nov 9th, 2018
Background
Teachers traditionally used paper in binders or notebooks to track observations and more structured assessment information (test scores, etc.) for the students they were teaching. This meant the teacher had ownership and control over what was private to them vs. what was shared with the student and parent (returned test scores, graded papers, etc.) and what was shared with administrators at the school.
As teachers moved to non-networked PC gradebook software to do the same tasks the teachers still had full control over access to this information.
When Edsby was initially designed a number of years ago the principle was adopted that Edsby should support this same model so that teachers could still have the ability to control the release of assessment information to students and parents, and to other teachers and administrators at the school.
This technical note describes the how assessment data access is managed in Edsby.
Providing Access to Class Assessment Data
The Edsby Class Gradebook and Evidence system are used to track all assessment data that has been entered for the class. Edsby provides a convenient and transparent way for multiple educators to have access to the assessment data stored within the Edsby Class. This might be desired as part of a “team teaching” approach, or could be done to bring in the assistance of a specialist to review the assessment information of one or more students in the class.
To achieve this kind of sharing the teacher of the class simply adds in another educator as a “teacher” in the class via the Class Setup form. Once added, the additional educator has full access to the assessment data in the class. When someone is added in this way they are listed in the Class in the “Teachers” panel so that all involved are aware of who has access to the information within the class.
Administrators with the Edsby role of “Senior Admin” (typically principals and vice-principals) and “Office Head” can also access the class setup form to provide other staff with access to the class. This typically is done to add into the class a long term replacement teacher or a curriculum specialist.
Direct Access to All Class Assessment Data
The standard Edsby configuration does not provide a path by which a school administrator can directly access the Class gradebook and evidence system.
Edsby appreciates that different jurisdictions and different organizations have varying preferences and obligations in this area. So Edsby does provide a way to change this standard behavior for specific roles as an organization wide setting.
For example, an organization may decide that educators with the role of “Guidance” at a school SHOULD be able to directly access the assessment data of any class within a school. Likewise, the organization could decide that “Senior Admin” staff should have the same ability. This can be turned on in Edsby by role across the organization. When it is turned on for a role when a user with that role opens an Edsby Class they’ll see links to the Gradebook and Evidence data held within the class.
Typically an organization decides if they want to change the default behaviour in this area as part of the setup configuration process.
Access to Assessment Data
Edsby provides a very convenient way for teachers to share assessment results and observational evidence of learning. They simply click the share button (in the gradebook) or the share checkbox (in Evidence of Learning) to share a particular item they’ve entered in Edsby. When an item is shared it is made available to the student, to the parents/guardians of the student (that have access to information turned on for that student), and to other educators (school administrators, guidance, other teachers that are teaching that student) so they have a view of what has been shared with the student and parent(s). This is available via the student Panorama via the “my work” button in each class, and through the progress report facility provided there (see Panorama sample snap).
Future Planned Enhancements
Providing the right balance of access vs. privacy is challenging. We continue to evolve Edsby in this area based on feedback from our customers to provide facilities to enable each learning organization to make the right choices for their organization. Some requested enhancements that we’re looking to add into Edsby include:
Class-specific Access Roles: Right now when a staff member Is manually added into an Edsby class via the class setup form they receive full access to all information within the class. We plan to provide a set of class-specific roles so that staff can be added with reduced access to the class (no gradebook access, or read-only gradebook access, etc.). In addition we anticipate adding a control for whether the added individual is visible to students and parents or not. In some cases (for example when a curriculum consultant has been added in) that configuration change isn’t relevant for students and parents to know.
Expanded Progress Report Flexibility: Currently when a progress report is generated via the Panorama it only includes the assessment data that has been shared with the student and parent (as discussed above). We are looking into adding in an enhancement that will let a role that has full gradebook access in all classes generate a Panorama progress report with an option to either include or not include unshared assessment scores in the progress report. This would enable someone with, say, a “Guidance” role to conveniently look at the complete set of assessment data (both shared and unshared) across all subjects the student is currently enrolled in if the organization has chosen to turn on this facility.