Vol. 4, Issue 11
November, 2009

North Carolina Dept.
of Public Instruction

ClassScape Newsletter

ClassScape is an online classroom assessment system that facilitates learning by focusing on curricular objectives. ClassScape enables teachers to monitor student performance on North Carolina Standard Course of Study academic indicators. The system also allows North Carolina teachers to build customized tests or use tests prepared by ClassScape.

ClassScape assists teachers in self-assessment of instructional strategies, and monitoring student progress on an ongoing basis. Teachers can select specific objectives to assess throughout the school year and access real-time instructional feedback reports.

In This Issue:

Available Assessments
Using Formative Assessments to Individualize Instruction and Promote Learning
ClassScape From the Teacher's Perspective
Understanding The Error Messages for Creating a Custom Assessment
Video Tutorials
Coming AtTECHtions
Where in the World is ClassScape Now?
Contacts

All of us here at ClassScape are excited about our truly improved system. Particular among the new features we are constantly rolling out is our series of online training tutorials--designed to guide you step by step in using the wonderful functionality of ClassScape.

These free, easily-accessible software tutorials cover every aspect of using ClassScape from basic actions, such as logging in and setting up your classes, scheduling assessments, and viewing basic reports, to our more advanced features.

Each tutorial is a self-contained training session, complete with clear video and audio, as well as closed captioning. The sub-chapters linked within each module allow you to skip the parts with which you are familiar, thus avoiding redundancy and saving you precious time. For an example, please click here.

Our online training tutorials are available for you to reference 24 hours a day. Use them to learn the new features we have implemented to ClassScape or just to review and buttress your already-mastered knowledge of our system.

For available assessments click here

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Assessing Student Learning
Using Formative Assessments to Individualize Instruction and Promote Learning
- Juliann M. Kaftan, Gayle A. Buck, Alyssa Haack, National Middle School Association

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ClassScape From The Teacher's Perspective
- Kelly Cave, Gentry Middle School

ClassScape offers a wide variety of reporting options for teachers. Quite honestly, it can be a bit overwhelming! However, it is imperative to look at the data when planning instruction. One simple way to get an overview for each student is the “Student Performance Report.”

The “All Goals” option allows a teacher to get a quick snap shot comparison of each individual student’s performance. Our students keep a data notebook to share with parents at Student Led Conferences. Including the “Student Performance Report” allows parents to look at the broad picture instead of focusing on one classroom assessment, assignment or project. Allowing students to share the bigger picture of their performance is more aligned with how they will be assessed on the EOG Tests. We are attempting to stress the importance of growing and improving the students’ overall performance.

Please understand, a lot can be said for the need to focus on specific objective areas. Narrowing the parameters for instruction helps improve a student’s overall performance. Looking at specific sub-objectives may often boost student understanding for an entire goal. Fine tuning of specific skills will certainly ensure growth and understanding. Sub-objectives are just that. The main objective is broken into smaller more specific skills. So, from this “teacher’s perspective,” developing custom assessments to revisit sub-objectives offers student and teachers the opportunity to visit a main objective from all angles. Compare this approach to coaching an athletic sport. The most successful coaches are able to impress on players how a particular play looks from all perspectives. When a team member absorbs information from different viewpoints, he/she truly begins to understand the big picture.

The original challenge still stands. Focus on specific skills and narrow instruction as student performance yields, but present parents and students with a broad goal centered report and compare performance over greater periods of instruction. As we revisit the “Student Performance Report,” we hope to see advancement in steady steps by the end of the year.

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Understanding The Error Messages For Creating A Custom Assessment
- Vicki Thomas

Creating an assessment that meets the needs of your students is an important thing to do, but if you can't make it through to a final product, it quickly becomes a very frustrating thing to do. I've listed below some of the more common ERROR messages and explained how to overcome them. Using this list will help you to get past those frustrations and on to more appropriate assessments for your students.

Let’s start by getting there first. Clicking on Assessments and then Create Custom Assessment brings you to a page with a list of grade levels and subjects which you can use to build beautiful assessments. Not knowing quite what to do on this page, you might think that you need to click on Go to Drafts.

No assessment(s) saved for further development! Well, that didn’t take long! While this is not an error message, it is a little disconcerting. When you click on Go to Drafts, ClassScape pulls up any assessment drafts you have created. If you have never started to create a custom assessment, then you won’t have any drafts to work with. Click on the Back button and then choose a subject/grade level to work in by highlighting it in the table, and then click Next.

The following objective(s) must have at least 4 items selected: Objective 1.02. This is a math error message. Once you have selected at least 8 items, the Next button becomes available. If you click on it and you don’t have enough items selected for an objective, this is the error message that you will see. To solve this problem, locate the objective specified in the error message, and select enough items to have 4 in the objective. For US History and Civics and Economics, the required number is 2. You would see a similar error message directing you to choose at least 2 items for the listed objective. Here’s a handy piece of info for you. The sub-objective is not the important piece for this count. You can have an a, b, c and d for an objective and that will count as 4 items even though it is broken down by sub-objective in the table of information at the top of the screen.

Please select between 4 and 6 items for the following selection(s): SelNo 915 ( Goal 1 ). This is similar to the math error listed above. With reading , US History, and Civics & Economics, you have selection based items to choose. If you are using a selection, you must use between 4 and 6 items. If you click on the next button and you receive an error message similar to the one above, then use the info in the message to locate the problem selections and either choose more, or deselect a few items to be able to move on to the next step. SelNo refers to the selection number and is the number in the 2nd column.

Custom assessments must have between 8 and 50 items. and The following objective(s) must have at least 4 items selected: Objective 1.01. These two error messages show up on step 3 when you are putting your finishing touches on your assessment, and have clicked Finalize. You probably threw too many items away. Hopefully, they are still in the trash can and you can pull some of them back out. If not, then click on the Back button and add some more items to your assessment.

Error adding / deleting items from current custom assessment. Please retry. Sometimes it just has a moment. Continue with what you were doing, or Refresh your screen.

Items of the same selection must be grouped together within a custom assessment. This error message comes will show up if you have mixed up the colors while moving your items around. Selection based items have to stay within their color groups. This is not an error message you will see for math, but you could see it in any other subject. Just move your items around so that your colors are back together. For items that need to be moved to the very edges, it is easier to move the item right beside of where you want it, and then pull the first (or last) item over one.

Please name your assessment. Give your assessment a name that represents the content of the assessment. It does not have to include your name, the subject, or the grade level. That is automatically added for you.

Remember that creating a custom assessment does not automatically schedule it for your class. You will still need to do that. Go to Assessments -> Schedule Assessments -> and then scroll to the bottom of the grade level and subject which has your custom assessment. You can click on that assessment and schedule it.

Good luck with creating your own assessments. Once again, do let us know if you need help!

Enjoy the crisp, autumn weather.

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Video Tutorials

The following video tutorials are currently available for both Elementary and Middle School and High School teachers. You can find them by clicking Help > Tutorials once you’re logged in to ClassScape:

Overview of the ClassScape System
 - Getting Started with ClassScape
 - Adding Classes in ClassScape
 - Viewing Class Rosters
 - Scheduling Assessments
 - Managing Scheduled Assessments
 - Creating Custom Assessments
 - Saving a Custom Assessments as a Drafts
 - Managing Finalized Custom Assessments
 - Generating a Basic Report
 - Generating a Student Assessment Report
 - Generating a Common Assessment Report
 - Generating a Class Performance Report
 - Generating a Class Progress Report
 - Generating a Pre/Post Assessment Report
 - Generating a Student Objective Report
 - Generating a Student Progress Report
 - Generating a Student Performance Report
 - The ClassScape Student Interface (Tutorial for Teachers)
 - The ClassScape Student Interface (Tutorial for Students)
 - Allowing Pop-up Windows from the ClassScape website

We've also begun a tutorial series specifically for Test Administrators. The following tutorials are currently available:

- Creating and Managing User Accounts
- Creating and Managing Classes
- Getting Help with ClassScape

Upcoming tutorials include:

- Adding a Student Roster to ClassScape
- Managing Student Information
- Scheduling Assessments
- Creating Custom Assessments

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New features in ClassScape available now:

• Data DVDs for schools for the 2008 - 2009 school year.
• Data DVDs for districts for the 2008 - 2009 school year.
• Read-Aloud option in all computer skills, math, science and social studies pre-packaged objective quizzes.
• Read-Aloud manual under ClassScape Help.
• Highlighting parts of a reading passage within the student interface.
• Student Bulk Upload now moves students to another school
  if the unique student id exists at another school in the district.

• Integration of ClassScape and Smartboard “clickers” - November
• Integration of ClassScape with Turning Points and Promethean “clickers”.
• Improved handling of inactive students in a class or school.
• Option for students to review incorrect answers in a completed test during the two week period following test completion.

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Where in the World is ClassScape Now?
    "Trish-bits"

Highlighting is Here!!!

After much research and effort by our programmers, ClassScape is proud to announce our highlight feature within our reading selections! Students are now able to “pick up” a highlighter and add a yellow background across selected words, sentences, and paragraphs. Students will see three buttons above the selection with a picture of a highlighter, no highlighter, and erase all highlights. Below is a screen shot of what students can see. Please have your students practice with this new feature. Remember that highlighting is only effective if it is used with selected words. If the entire selection is highlighted, it loses effectiveness as a reading strategy!



Custom Benchmark Building Services

As you know, our ClassScape team is dedicated to meeting the needs of our North Carolina schools. One need that has surfaced over the last year is assistance with building district benchmarks. We would like to help you with this step in the benchmark process. For an additional fee of $200 per assessment, our ClassScape content specialists will carefully select test items to create high quality, balanced assessments that are tailored to your district-specific pacing guides. If you are interested in taking advantage of this service, please email Trish Martin at trish_martin@ncsu.edu for more information.

ClassScape Enrollment Process

Here are the steps for getting started with the ClassScape system:

• Acquire a PO for the amount needed for enrollment fees (www.classscape.org/enroll.jsp)
• Complete and submit our online enrollment form. We must have this online form submitted to us before we can generate an invoice and allow access to the system.
• To schedule user training for your school and/or district, please complete and submit an online Request for Training form at www.classscape.org/trainRequest.jsp
• If you are re-enrolling in our system, you will need to do steps 1 and 2. You can use your existing teacher and test administrator logins and passwords from the previous year but you will need to do another bulk student upload and set up new classes for this school year.  

Trainings available for the Fall:

Many school systems have already scheduled their staff trainings with us. If you are in need of ClassScape training, please complete our online Request for Training form at www.classscape.org/trainRequest.jsp or contact our Training Coordinator, Lindsey Hardin, at Lindsey_hardin@ncsu.edu. November is almost full so please fill out your form ASAP in order to receive a date. Here are the trainings we offer:

New School Start-Up Package 
$450.00 per school
The New School Start-Up Package includes 3 on-site trainings: Test Administrator, Basic User, and Reports/Data Analysis

-OR-

A La Carte Training 
$250.00 per day per trainer
Your choice of one of the following on-site trainings:
Test Administrator, Basic User, Reports/Data Analysis, Refresher, or District Benchmark 

Now Available for November 2009

• Highlighting parts of a reading passage
• A Read Aloud option in all math, science and social studies pre-packaged objective quizzes!
• Algebra 2 and Geometry pre-packaged objective quizzes
• Extend2 Reading items for the district level benchmark item bank

Projects in Development

• Integration of ClassScape and “clickers” for Smart Technologies
• Integration of ClassScape and “clickers” (Promethean, Turning Points, E-Instruction)
• Item Development for the new Essential Standards in Math and English 10  

Status Report ( August 1, 2009 through October 26, 2009):  

• 435,237 students registered
• 377,404 assessment starts
• 63,000 items in our database
• 962 schools enrolled
• 84 districts represented
• 52 districts enrolled district-wide
• 41 districts using the benchmark tool  

2009-10 Participating School Systems:

Congrats Corner
Highest Number of Assessment Starts by District (since 8-1-09) - Top 10 in North Carolina

Highest Number of Assessment Starts by School (since 8-1-09) - Top 10 in North Carolina

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Current version: 2.2.0
ClassScape Help Desk — (919) 515-1320

ClassScape is a service provided by the
Center for Urban Affairs & Community Services of