More Options for Students More Assessment Tools More Reporting More Support Services

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1 More Options for Students More Assessment Tools More Reporting More Support Services

2 We have been able to gather data to inform instruction in classes. For teachers trying to figure out what their students are actually learning, we can run reports and identify what they are learning and how are they actually adapting to what they are being taught. Lauren Andresen, Instructional Support Specialist, Southern New Hampshire University Chalk & Wire: Much More Than A Portfolio In 1995, a group of talented educators and information technologists at the Communications Research Centre in Ottawa, Canada developed the first web-based portfolio, assessment and reporting tool. Since then, that tool has evolved into the sophisticated Chalk & Wire portfolio authoring and data analysis system used today by hundreds of thousands of students, faculty and professional staff at colleges and universities, and in K-12 schools, throughout North America and Australia. This flexible software allows students to easily build any kind of electronic portfolio they desire, as well as maintain their portfolio(s) in a variety of electronic and web-based formats after they graduate or transfer. Plus, Chalk & Wire provides professional design and support services for effectively implementing these robust applications for assessment, data management and analysis. In short, Chalk & Wire provides much more than electronic portfolio authoring tools and services. Our comprehensive approach to assessment lets any education professional house and share authentic student work samples and generate valid data sets that inform teaching and learning. The end result is that students grow academically and professionally. In addition, Chalk and Wire s tools and services support academic strategies and goals at all levels, including accreditation management processes.

3 Setting the Standard for Building Student-Learning Environments, Implementing Assessment Plans, and Managing Accreditation Our suite of tools has been developed through the input of dedicated users and experienced education and technology professionals. Students can build any kind of assessment, developmental, or showcase portfolio they desire. Their portfolios can demonstrate a single skill or multiple skills, be a collection of artifacts that reveal a variety of accomplishments, display how they have fulfilled assignments, and reveal their reflections on assessments and benchmark performance tasks required throughout their academic careers. They can create an unlimited number of portfolios. Plus, all portfolio accounts come with unlimited web-based file storage. Faculty members, assessors and staff can build course objectives, assignments and scoring rubrics tied to any standards desired. While assessing student work, faculty members and assessors can view scoring rubrics in a split-screen modality and easily provide comments based on defined criteria. Administrators can manage and analyze data through Chalk & Wire s robust reporting engine. Data objects in Chalk & Wire are designed to create a chain, consisting of assignments, rubrics, standards and student demographics that link authentic student work with external and/or internal standards, objectives and goals. Administrative users can easily run simple or more complex statistical analyses based on the elements in the chain. Overall, the system is a powerful tool for monitoring the quality of your assessments and for ensuring that education standards are being met. We are very happy with Chalk & Wire s ability to assess content based on the standards. I like the ability of Chalk & Wire to be flexible. I can design our content, design our student artifacts to focus on what we are good at, and focus on our requirements and really accomplish the things that we want to accomplish. Kelly McClure, Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology, Cameron University Department of Education

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5 More Options for Students Chalk & Wire provides students with an intuitive, easy-to-use tool that allows them to create personal, program, developmental, and showcase electronic portfolios, to meet virtually all their individual, educational and professional needs. The Chalk & Wire electronic portfolio is a simple web-based point-and-click environment that allows users, given little training, to create high quality, online work and presentation spaces. Personalized, Customizable Interface The first screen students see is their customizable C&W dashboard, giving them an individualized interface for organizing and presenting information relevant to their personal, academic and professional lives. From here they can access information about when assignments are due, along with their latest assessment results; use a calendaring and scheduling function; view news and RSS feeds; and much more. A Central Space With Many Functions and Purposes Once inside their electronic portfolio environment, students are given unlimited web-based storage and can create as many portfolios as they desire. Because it is web-based, they can access it 24/7, for: uploading documents, images, and video and audio 1 files to an artifact storage library that they can draw from at any time when building their electronic portfolios; creating electronic portfolios with program/course/faculty-directed themes, standards, and formats, or by using their own customized/personalized preferences; submitting work to their electronic portfolios via an advanced editor feature that provides students with the ability to structure and format submissions however they like; sharing, at their discretion, entire portfolios or single pages through a secure URL feature and via with assessors, faculty, private work groups, friends and family, as well as prospective employers; reflecting and commenting on their work and the work of others; submitting work to specific faculty members and assessors for review, scoring and feedback based on viewable, pre-defined rubrics; and viewing assessment results and related details. Transportability for Lifelong Learning and Career Advancement Any Chalk & Wire electronic portfolio can be downloaded and saved locally or to a flash drive, burned to a CD or DVD, or published and edited on a website. Also, students can renew their accounts as long as they desire, even after they graduate. Expired accounts remain housed on Chalk & Wire s secure servers and may be reactivated months or even years later. 1 Chalk & Wire uses streaming technology to allow students to upload video and audio files. These files are automatically converted and condensed into small streaming Flash files for viewing quickly and easily, even from a dial-up connection.

6 Easy-to-use Assessment Tools Chalk & Wire streamlines the assessment process. Once inside the assessment environment, faculty and assessors can check everything they need to effectively review and assess their students work in a highly organized and efficient manner. Anyone involved with the assessment process faculty, assessors, sub-administrators and full administrators can easily define and submit key assignments for students by using Chalk & Wire s Tables of Contents (TOCs) feature. TOCs are pre-established structures of student portfolios where instructions, titles, questions, resources, and linked rubrics and standards are presented. In short, TOCs are where students build their portfolios and submit their work for assessment. Simple Processes for Reviewing, Providing Feedback and Integrating with Current Systems Faculty and assessors need very little training to use Chalk & Wire s assessment tools. Reviewers simply point, click and type to review student work and provide feedback. They can comment on student work through rubrics, by uploading a resource, or commenting directly in the student portfolio. The entire process allows faculty members to easily keep track of all their assessment-related work. Plus, the assessment processes and plans you already have, or are currently building from the ground up, can be integrated quickly and easily into the Chalk & Wire system. Faculty and assessors can also use Chalk & Wire to produce personal academic portfolios that document their teaching, research and service for the purpose of promotion or professional development. Dashboard Interface Similar to students and administrators, faculty and assessors have a customizable dashboard interface for organizing and presenting information on their desktop that is relevant to their work. From here they can access all of their student submissions; view and examine, in detail, all the assessments they already performed, are in-progress, or are pending; review progress reports; click on quick links and news items; use a calendaring and scheduling function; and more.

7 Flexible Scoring and Commenting Features Faculty and assessors can score and comment on individual or group student electronic portfolio submissions, formally and informally, via as well as within the portfolio itself. Reviewers can use pre-defined rubrics in a split-screen environment, allowing them to simultaneously view student submissions and scoring rubrics that can range from a simple met/not-met rating to a more complex additive format. The commenting features of the Chalk & Wire assessment system provide faculty and assessors with a wide variety of options. Reviewers can annotate and remark on students work inside or outside of the assessment process. Comments can be phrase, paragraph and/or page specific, allowing reviewers to target comments to distinct items within student portfolios. To make it even easier, comments can be typed in or voice recorded with our audio annotation feature. Overall, faculty and assessors are able to facilitate a rich dialogue with their students by using Chalk & Wire s commenting features. Archiving Submissions for Future Review Each time students submit their electronic portfolio files and related artifacts for assessment, Chalk & Wire immediately archives a copy of everything submitted at that time. Although the student can continue to revise his portfolio and its contents, the archived version cannot be changed. This provides the reviewer with the ability to see the material as it was at the time it was submitted, therefore maintaining its authenticity. Moreover, the archived copy of the submitted work now belongs to the institution and may be referenced for accreditation, research and program-audit uses at any time in the future. Sharing Assessment Chains with Other Assessors or Groups Based on assessment results, Chalk & Wire can automatically direct a student to customized next steps for review, remediation or extension activities. Chalk & Wire also allows an escalation of assessments, if desired, so that assessed items can be passed to other assessors or a group of assessors for further evaluation. This automates remedial actions, reassessment of marginal performances, as well as committee assessment. Facilitating Meaningful Interaction Overall, one of the key by-products of the Chalk & Wire system is that meaningful interactions are very easily accommodated by all stakeholders concerned, moving teaching and learning to highly productive and engaging levels.

8 Chalk & Wire s Performance Analysis: More Than Reporting Chalk & Wire s robust reporting engine was developed with institutional research in mind. As such, it is a content-neutral reporting tool, capable of multiple levels of analysis that address the important questions of any discipline. We like to compare our reporting engine to an Olympic-sized swimming pool. At the shallow end, users can generate descriptive reports, showing, for example, mean, median, standard deviation, and graphic distributions (numeric and graphic) of individual assessments. At the deep end, users can develop more complex reports, such as correlational and cluster analyses, linear regression, and much more. In short, Chalk & Wire s reporting tools can take the user way beyond frequency counts in tracking and monitoring student and program outcomes. And, best of all, the reporting features are a free, fully-integrated component of the Chalk & Wire system! Information at Your Fingertips Chalk & Wire users can access a customizable dashboard interface, from their desktop, for organizing and displaying information that is relevant to their work. The dashboard environment gives users a wide variety of optional graphic displays that employ dynamic RSS feeds to link directly to strategic analysis results. Users can monitor the status of any assessment process at the click of a mouse.

9 Turning Data Into Action Chalk & Wire can quickly and easily aggregate and disaggregate data from a variety of sources, including data collected internally by portfolio assessments or surveys, as well as imported data from external databases and learning management systems. Users can produce powerful reports that support quality assurance and facilitate action for improvement of program and individual learning outcomes. Chalk & Wire keeps institutions, departments, and programs proactive and ahead of the curve by: Facilitating complex pattern analyses of large data sets. 1 Highlighting statistically significant differences to pinpoint elements of the system with potential for highly positive or negative impact, and to identify anomalous data that might warrant further investigation. 2 Supporting detailed comparative analysis among groups, using customized demographic filters. With just a few clicks, users can examine growth over time at a macro or micro level, viewing performance level results broken out by rubric or specific criteria for multiple time parameters. Enabling users to determine if outcomes on one set of criteria are predictive of outcomes on a different set of criteria, as well as providing for validation of locally developed assessment criteria, through regression analysis. Providing automated functionality for both formal and informal inter-rater reliability testing and reporting. Addressing the complexities of learning and performance-based assessment by supporting both quantitative and qualitative evaluation of system and learner processes and products. 3 Developing customized reporting solutions that meet the needs of both formative and summative assessment schemes. The Chalk & Wire development team is highly responsive to client requests for specific report types to meet individualized strategic goals. We take pride in our aggressive development schedule, driven by keen attention to customer feedback and dedication to user satisfaction. In addition to generating a wide variety of analysis reports, Chalk & Wire offers institutional stakeholders a synergistic partnership with the assessment and technology professionals on our staff to structure and implement system improvements. The Chalk & Wire team produces critical system analysis reports at strategic intervals, thus empowering institutional leaders to actively address ongoing system validation and accountability issues. 1 Cluster analysis is based on pattern matching. What you are looking for in the result of a cluster analysis is support for your hypotheses about what the assessments are measuring. This type of analysis is also helpful in identifying problem areas in data collection and assessment processes, such as redundancy in construct measurement and misalignment of assessment tasks with standards. 2 The importance of statistical significance must always be considered within the context of the assessment. Chalk & Wire education professionals can help with this process through a regular schedule of comprehensive system analyses. 3 Chalk & Wire s reporting engine integrates with and complements other system tools such as commenting, messaging, sharing, and an embedded survey tool to provide networked support for collaborative content analysis of student work and assessor feedback.

10 More Services to Help You Succeed Our primary objective is to make you successful. From the start, we work with you to build a partnership focused on accomplishing all of your assessment goals with your specific strategies in mind. 2-Day, Face-to-face Customized Training Chalk & Wire s experts in assessment design and planning conduct the training session, which is typically held in an informal, retreat-like setting, away from your daily grind, at one of our training centers in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada or in Baltimore, Maryland. The other training option entails us coming to you for two days. Either way, training is both software-specific and conceptual. We ask you about your data needs and assessment plans and begin to look closely at how you identify, monitor and verify attainment of core standards, goals, outcomes and objectives. We can also analyze your assessment instruments for effectiveness and utility. We ask lots of questions in order to understand your current assessment culture. In short, we show you how to best utilize our tools for the benefit of your students and faculty as well as to enhance your overall assessment system. On-going Support Services We offer and telephone support to faculty, students and administrators. Our help desk analysts can answer questions related to all aspects of our products. All inquiries are routed to the most qualified person on our team, with issues escalated as required. We have tutorials, animated demos and help manuals to guide you through all of Chalk & Wire s features and functions. Additionally, each year we hold a 3-day conference in which participants explore the design and refinement of electronic portfolios, assessment, and reporting processes. Whether you are an administrator seeking advice of a conceptual nature, a student who needs help with creating his electronic portfolio, or a faculty member/assessor who has a question about how to provide feedback to students, our wide-ranging support system is there for you every step of the way. Building Product Enhancements Chalk & Wire s mission revolves around researching and developing state-of-the-art tools that monitor and verify learning. We are constantly working with our users to improve our tools. All feature requests, if judged to be of a generic value to all users (and nearly all are), are put into our cycles of seasonal builds. We realize and honor the fact that our users feedback is what truly makes our system the best available today. Not only is our Continuous Improvement Policy key to customer satisfaction, it is vital to our own satisfaction as researchers and developers.

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12 See and Hear How Chalk & Wire Can Work For You Call or to learn how Chalk & Wire can help you reach your goals and to schedule a free, tailor-made online demonstration. Canada/USA inquiries: ask@chalkandwire.com Australia: australia@chalkandwire.com All other international inquiries: ask@chalkandwire.com Mailing Address: 19 Leawood Court St. Catharines, ON L2T 3R5 Canada