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We want to make sure you're getting the full value of the powerful LabSim reports included with your instructor course license. They can help you make a big impact on your students' progress. In this Teachers Lounge, TestOut Trainers Stevie George and Allan Escobar lead an insightful discussion with several instructors and they do a deep dive into LabSim report data, on topics such as:
- Class Gradebook
- Class Time Spent per Resource
- Class Study History
- Specific Resources Scores by Class
- Individual Scores by Product
- Certification Practice Exam Scores
- Administration Level Reports
Full Transcription*:
Stevie George
Welcome to our teacher's lounge today. We're so happy to have you join us. This is Stevie. I’m with the TesOut Training Department. And joining me today is also Allan, our other training specialist, and he's going to spend a few minutes introducing our special guests today.
Allan Escobar
Yes, thank you Stevie! We have a group of great instructors today that we're so excited to hear from. First off, we have Gaylonda Martin. She is from Chalmette High School in Louisiana. She's been teaching for one year in business education and this is her second semester using LabSim. We're excited to have you in Gaylonda. Next, we have Laurie Seeder. She is from Louisiana State University at Eunice in Louisiana. She's been teaching for 14 years and has been using LabSim for about four years now as well. Good to have you, Laurie. Next, we have Phil Crawford. He is from Lewis and Clark Career Center in Missouri. And he's been teaching for about nine years now. And this is his second year using LabSim. So good to have you Phil.
Stevie George
Great, thank you for those introductions, and welcome, everybody. Appreciate you coming and joining us today. I am currently in my LabSim account, which I just brought up on the screen for you, because our topic today is we want to talk about LabSim reports, and we want to dive a little bit into the data that's available. First, let me go through and show you across from one of your classes, you can click on the More button, and go into the View Class Reports from here. And the ones that we want to talk about today are the first six reports that you see on this list.
Some of these are new. Some of them have been updated, but we want to cover these today. And for convenience’s sake, we're simply going to go down through this list.
Allan Escobar
Before we do that Stevie, let's go ahead and talk about the different roles that instructors might have, different rights that they have.
Stevie George
That's this is a great time to talk about that here. So, let's go ahead and look at that.
Allan Escobar
Great. Thank you. This is just a quick graphic, showing the three different types of roles that an instructor can have in LabSim. There's the instructor role, the school administrator role, or the organization administrator. One or more of these roles can be assigned to your account. And just as this graphic shows, you have different report rights based on your job role. So, that first one down here at the bottom, is the instructor role. As you can see, as an instructor, you'll be able to view data for your classes and for your students. The role above that will be the school administrator role. Here, you’ll be able to view data for all classes, and all students. So, if you have multiple classes within a school, you able to see all of those classes and all of the students there. Now, the last role here is the Organization Administrator role. And this is typically for those administrators who are in charge of more than one school. So here under your organization, you'll be able to view data for all classes and all students at any school within your organization.
Stevie George
Great. Thank you. So again, I am in my account where we have reports, and as I mentioned, we're going to start at the top of this list and just work our way down. The first one that's on the list is probably the most utilized report of all of our reports thus far, I'm sure, which is the class gradebook. Now, Laurie, you're one of our veteran users here on our panel today. The question is, how do you use this report, and what score do you typically like to take? So let me run this report here to show you some data.
Laurie Seeder
Well, what I do is, I use it to make sure that my students are on track of where I need them to be. We try and follow the weekly guidelines that are set up on the spreadsheet that TestOut gives us. I look for one of two things. I look to see what their percentages are and I look to see what they've been doing. I like them to get at least an 80% on the quizzes. And I asked them to do the labs and the videos. This helps me see who's doing the work, who's not doing the work. And I can see the timeframe. That timeframe really, really helps. The date range filter helps for seeing, for example my student says, “OK, I did this on this day,” and I can go specifically to that date and say, “no, you didn't.” And if they continue to say, yes, they did, then I can go to TestOut support, and TestOut support can go further in, and tell me, yes or no, they did or didn't.
Martin, Gaylonda
I use the report, of course, as everyone on the panel does. What I do is the Skill Lab, the Challenge Lab, and the Applied Lab, I give them all 10%. I give my students an opportunity to do the labs more than once. With the particular gradebook, you can see the average between them trying it two or three times. And you can also choose the score that I think is best. The one that will support them. I have a lot of students and in the area where we live in, we have flooding and different things. I want to keep them motivated and coming to do their simulations. So I try the highest grade. I give them opportunity to take the labs more than once so they can feel comfortable. I don't use the average this semester, although last semester I did. But I let them have the highest score to give them a little motivation to continue the labs and to keep the momentum and to keep trying to do their assignments.
Laurie Seeder
I think too, Gaylonda, that that's really good because my students, with some of the labs, they find it really difficult. But once they keep doing it over, and over, and over again, then eventually it becomes like a memory muscle to them. And so, I take the highest score, and I tell them, do it until you know it. And I don't let them know that they can print or look at their mistakes. A few of them have figured it out, but not many of them have. And so they keep on doing it until they get that 100%, because they want that certificate.
Martin, Gaylonda
That's correct. They want that 100%. That is true.
Stevie George
Let me just make a comment quickly in here. If you noticed, I switch between reports because the other thing that our panel of guests are doing here is that we have some teachers doing IT products. And Gaylonda specifically, I know you're working with the Office programs. So, you're working with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. So we are going to look at both of those options. With the Office course, we do have three different types of labs. And that's what Gaylonda has specifically been referring to. And Laurie, I know you've been talking about the IT reports, but nonetheless, we're still at this point talking about the highest score, no matter what we're looking at. Go ahead, Phil.
Phil Crawford
Yes, this is the, definitely the report that I look at probably on a daily basis. It definitely gives me the best view but from a gradebook perspective. I don't know if there are some people out there that may be using a separate learning management system to input grades for their students. Oftentimes I will actually use the show scores as the percentage so that I can then assign however many points I want it to be in my gradebook. With TestOut, if you show the scores as points, there's a lot of different, depending on the lab or the exercise that you're doing, different point values. So, for me, I make my grading as simple as I can possibly make it. Like you can see here, there's a lab worth 4 points, but there's also a lab worth 7. There's also one worth 10. So, for me, I show it as a percentage so that when I put it in my gradebook, everything's like 10 points or 100 points or 50 points or something that's easy for me to do the math. And I assign that in my gradebook. I show all of those resources, because I make sure that all of my students are getting all of that information. From year one to year two, I kind of learned that those fact sheets are actually probably the meat and potatoes of what you need. The videos are great, and I love the videos. I love how the form is shorter but those fact sheets are really, really important, as far as filling in some of the knowledge from the videos. And they go really well together. So, this year I'm making sure that they review those.
Laurie Seeder
I've had students when I first started using this, they thought the fact sheets were immaterial. And when I would set my custom exams, or when they were going to take the certificate, they were like, “but, this wasn't covered.” “It was, it was covered on this fact sheet right here.” And so that's why I make everything mandatory. Because if they don't do it, then they're not going to pass certification exam. And that's my ultimate goal.
Phil Crawford
Yeah, absolutely, 100% agreement with that. There's no replacing the fact sheets. I don't like doing direct instruction. I don't like getting up in front of my students and just spouting off the fact sheet, but it is something that we normally have a conversation about. I've kind of flipped my classroom this year, and having students watch the videos at home, so they're prepared to come in and talk about the lesson. That way then we can spend some more time on things like the fact sheets and doing some of the labs inside of TestOut. And then, as well as trying to physically do them hands-on with some of the equipment that we have.
Stevie George
By the way, those videos and lessons are only graded either zero or 100%. There's no in-between grade on those, where, obviously, with the exams in the labs, there are various scores. Or if we're talking Office, Office would just be labs only. Have you guys spent time using the new drill down feature where you can click on these hot links to see what students are doing? And how has that helped you?
Phil Crawford
This is one that I use a lot. I conference with my students every Friday usually, and this is what I use to have that conversation with them about where they were lost or where they may have taken a misstep. Sometimes, depending on what the lab is or how far in we are, I'll actually have them screen record doing the lab, so that I can actually see where they may have made a mistake. It was really cool. I actually stumbled across this on accident, but as soon as I stumbled across it and I was like, “oh, this is my new thing that I'm going to use this to conference with my students.” So, this part has actually been really, really helpful for me because it gives you everything that you need. If got something wrong, it literally tells you, “hey, this is where you need to click, this is what you need to do.” And it really helps my students get back to that 100% that everybody is seeking.
Martin, Gaylonda
I have a question. I know that I can see the student’s report, but I don't see that particular report that makes the breakdown. Can you tell me where that's located?
Stevie George
When you go into run the Class Gradebook report, you will see these scores here and then to drill down for further information, you can click the percentage. So, I'm going to click this 83% and then it's going to show here what step or steps the student missed and what they got correct. In the explanation section here, I think where Phil was just talking about, you can see the remediation steps of what needs to be done and what they can do to be successful the next time they go back to repeat the exercise. Did that answer your question?
Martin, Gaylonda
I understand to just click on the link of their grade to see that breakdown.
Stevie George
Exactly. My next question is, are you using all the assignments, like the exams at the end of the sections in the labs, or are you just using labs, or tell us what scores do you actually decide to use more, for grading purposes?
Laurie Seeder
I use all of the scores because I'm strongly encouraging most of my students that are not in my classes to take the certification exam. The one for ITF, the certification exam, is their final exam. So, I'm making sure that they get everything. And whatever the score they have for all four parts, that's what I use. I don't leave any of it out.
Phil Crawford
For me, the exams and the labs have a little bit more weight. Viewing the lessons and videos, I use more of like a low stakes sort of grading, almost like a pass/fail or just for credit. Because for me, in my teaching situation, I teach for 2.5 hours at a time. We get a good majority of this during class. So, just the fact that they've seen it, heard it, and read it, for me, is like, “OK, you've done all of these things, I've addressed all of the teacher domains for you to understand what we're talking about.” So, lessons and videos for me are more low stakes, just like, “hey, I see that you did it on this day, and you watched 100% of it. Here's your 1 point or 5 points out of five,” to just be a completion at that point. But for me, the exams and the labs are weighted a little bit higher.
Stevie George
Gaylonda since you're doing Office, everything in Office that we have report data for our specifically lab exercises. But some teachers just look at certain labs or weigh labs a little bit more like Phil was just saying. Do you look at all of those when you're looking at grades specifically or scores for grades?
Martin, Gaylonda
In fact, I do. I look at all of my labs: the skills, the challenge, and the applied labs. But I also do an additional written format because I have different students at different levels. So, I do a written portion of the test that will help the students who are at different levels to help bring their grades to another level.
Stevie George
Great. And then my next question. This was already talked about a little bit, but this date range filter. Sometimes we have people ask, you know, do we have due dates that they can set. And while we don't have due dates, I always like to point out that when you come to the reports, you can certainly look up information on a particular time period. Laurie, I know you were talking about that a little earlier. How does that date range specifically help you?
Laurie Seeder
It helps me keep the students on track, and it helps me find the students that are lagging behind. I can go to them and say, “OK, you haven't done anything since Section one. Why not, we're on Section three? What's going on?” And with the ones that are skipping the videos, or they're skipping the fact sheets, I can ask them why they're skipping on it. I had one student last semester tell me, “Well, I know it all.” I would then give a custom test, and I'd find out. He didn't know it all. And he found out, he didn’t know it all. And so, by proving to them that, I see what you're doing, I know what you're doing, I know when you did it, and I know if you did it, it gives them accountability as well. They say, “Ok, she's on my back, I want her off my back, so let me go and do my work.” And, like I said, I can pull specific date ranges of when we're working on whatever section it is we're working on.
Phil Crawford
I’m pretty similar to that as well. We are very strongly encouraged to make sure that we have weekly updates for grades just so our parents can see where their students are on the portal. So, for me, the date range, I use it a lot with my lessons and my videos. I can see at a quick glance, if everyone has actually viewed everything within a given week. So, for me, a given week is like Saturday to Friday. If I set that range, then I can see very quickly, “OK, everyone has viewed these fact sheets and are seeing these videos.” Even when we sometimes watch videos in class, I make sure that they're playing the video. I have a speaker system in my classroom, and they're watching it, and we're all watching it together, but I make sure that on their screen, they're actually playing it so that I can see it during that date range as well. So, for me, it's specifically lessons and videos, but I can definitely see the application for exams and labs, as well. So, you can see at any given time period how much a student has completed or not completed.
Stevie George
We have scores for the practice questions, the labs, each of the labs in Office but in the end, how do you use these scores to create a final score? In essence, how do you do that?
Laurie Seeder
They’ve either done it or they haven't. I just take the raw score, whatever the raw score is, against what they did and I percentage it out that way. I have been toying with those that earn the certification, getting an automatic A in the class. However, this past semester, I had one student that didn't do three or four of the sections, and he's still passed the certification exam. It's hard for me to want to give him an A in the class when he didn't do all the work, and the other students did. And they were still able to get certification. I average it out with the raw score against whatever they got.
Phil Crawford
Yeah, so for me, I usually take the raw score as well. Our grading is a little weird at my school. We have an employability grade as well. So, we treat our environment sort of like a workplace. And so, attendance and all of those other things, count towards it too. I also put my lessons and videos in that employability grade. Pretty much all of the exams and then all of the labs have their own categories in my gradebook. And then I use the lessons and videos as an employability grade. So, it's like, if you haven't looked at those things, it's like you're not being prepared for a big presentation or some sort of facet of your job. For me, those are where those things go up but it's essentially just the raw score. Whatever it is that you’ve gotten on those tests, on those labs over the course of the year or the semester, that's essentially what you're going to get.
Stevie George
And let me just point out to our viewers that if you do need to export data out of here, the download in the upper right will allow you to do that. You can name the file and then pull it up into an Excel spreadsheet if you do want to take an average of what their scores were. So, this gives you that opportunity to do that. Let me go back to our Office reports here. Gaylonda, so you can answer that on your end. As far as I think you said, you were using all of the scores for Skills, Challenge, and Applied Labs. So, how do you determine a final grade from these scores?
Martin, Gaylonda
Ok, I do as similar to the other instructors. I take my grades. I do give a final because I do have students who just get a pass/fail. They won't take the certified exam. All of the students who take the certified exam, of course, pass the course. But as Laurie stated, I do want them to have all the assignments completed and I average it out.
Stevie George
Allan, let's move into our next report, which is the class time spent per resource.
Allan Escobar
Great! It's actually very similar to the class gradebook in the way it's set up but now this time, instead of viewing scores, we're now seeing time. So for this one, we'll see how much time students are spending within any specific resource. And I'm curious to know, and I'll open it up to the panel, how often do you guys use this report? And how do you use it? Why do you use it?
Laurie Seeder
I just discovered that report not too long ago. And for me to compare it with my students is, when they come and tell me, “I spent three hours on this, and I don't know why I'm not getting it right.” Well, I can go and look at that report and say, “you spent 20 minutes on it, and you're not getting it right because you spent 20 minutes on it. And you didn't look at the videos, or you didn't read the fact sheet. So, something else is going on.” So, this is a really good resource for me with those students that say they spent so much time on something, and I can say, “Yeah, you didn't.” I’m sneaky.
Martin, Gaylonda
Yeah. As Laurie shared, on my Promethium board, I did do a scan because students were stating that they had completed assignments and I said, “Listen, let me show you what I can see.” And then I blotted, I moved the names, so they couldn’t see the names and I said, “I can see exactly how long you've been in this activity, and so if it's not done, it is a zero.” Oh, now everybody's reaction changed, of course. They say, “Oh, okay!”
Phil Crawford
Yeah, I actually use this report weekly for me. This report is actually pretty vital for me. It gives me a good indication of where their grade is. Now, I do have a few exceptional students. I have one student who has almost an identic memory. So, once he's seen it, he knows it, and he doesn't really have to look at it again. But outside of him, their grades, I will say, usually match up fairly well with how much time they've spent viewing the resource, or doing the test, or doing the lab. And it's been a pretty accurate representation of where they are, and what their understanding is of the material.
Stevie George
Speaking of time spent. Let's go into one of our new reports, the Class Study History Report. I really like this report, personally. We have people say that they use this for attendance, especially if they have online students, where they can see what they're doing, on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, or on a monthly basis. But the thing that I like about this report is that these hot links, can give you the more detail. For instance, you can see we have one student here that spent 52 minutes in the program, where a couple of other students, spent eight minutes. So there's obviously probably going to be a vast difference of what they covered. If I click on that 52, you can see that it'll show exactly the time that they spent in each of these areas. How does this particular report help you guys?
Laurie Seeder
This is going to help in the same way that some of the other reports do. If they're spending an inordinate amount of time on one skill, is it because they're not understanding it or is it because they're doing it too quickly and have to do it so many times over again? Or because they missed a step? Because students have a tendency to read the words they like and not all of the words. Knowing who spent a whole lot of time on one skill that they shouldn't have to spend so much time on, I can go in and help them with that one skill. I really liked this report. I was so excited when I saw it come up because it helps me see. I've got students like Phil, that they see it once, they know it. Or they've been working with it. We've got these kids coming out now that they've been working on in IT for so long, they came from it from birth, but then there's other things that they're struggling with. And this report is going to help with that a whole lot. I really like it.
Phil Crawford
Yeah. For me this one was a game changer because then I could see on a daily basis. I have some kids that have IEPs in my class, who have some attention deficits issues that they're dealing with. And I can look at this report at the end of the day and get a really good idea for how much it is they've paid attention or done versus my own visual observations of class or during lecture. Also, for me having that employability part of it. That report is very detailed and telling you exactly what it is that the student has actually done. Which specific lab, which specific fact sheet or video. And for me that is like, that's gold right there. We have parent teacher conferences coming up, and this is also a report that I can show to their parents and be like, “Hey, this is how much Johnny has done since the beginning of the semester. This is how much time he spent. How do you feel like he's spending his time at home? Is he doing work at home?” I can give a parent a full picture of what's happening in class. And, I don't feel like there's a whole lot of other software's or other things that can give you their full picture like this report can.
Martin, Gaylonda
I've only used this maybe once. I didn't know all of the details, where I could go to see the additional things. So, this is something new that I did obtain from just being part of this meeting today. I can access it and use it. So, this is good information for me.
Laurie Seeder
Kids today can't be like when I was in school. Because I would tell my dad, “I did it during study hall, or I did my homework in class.” And I learned how to forge my dad's signature when I was a kid so, he never saw my report card. And it wasn't him that went to the parent teacher conferences. It was my older brother. I couldn't do that if I was doing this today. My dad would say, “let me see your reports.” And, yeah, so this is going to help the kids in this day and age not be like somebody here was. That would be me.
Stevie George
Thank you Gaylonda for that information. And part of why we wanted to show these reports was for that very reason. We know that some of these new reports people are not familiar with. That's why we want to showcase this today. Let's move on to our other report on our list, which is this specific resource scores by class. Alan, let's talk a little bit about that one.
Allan Escobar
Before we do that, I actually do want to take a look at some of the admin level reports for study histories.
Stevie George
Absolutely. Let's do that. This is a great time to go ahead and look some of those admin reports over. We're talking about an Organizational Admin, and I should input here.
Allan Escobar
Right. So what we've been showing so far, have been some of those reports at the instructor level. You’ll remember that graphic that we showed earlier today. We have three different types of roles here within LabSim. We've been looking at a lot of those instructor level reports. What we're seeing now here is an account that has multiple roles assigned to them. And so, like we've been showing, you can click over on the More button for that specific class that you have to view reports for your individual classes as an instructor. But, you'll see that we have reports here, over to the right of our school's name. So, here, we have our TestOut Institute of Learning at Pleasant Grove. When I click here on Reports, I'm able to view some additional reports for my school and be able to view some more data for different classes and students at that school.
So here you'll see that we have our Individual Scores by Product Report, and also a Campus Study History report. And this will be similar to that Class Study History report that we were looking at earlier. This time, like I was saying, you'll be able to view reports for other classes. So here, you will not see any data right away. What you'll have to do is click on some of these filters here at the top, and then that'll auto refresh and show some of the different data. So, we'll select some data here. I'll select a teacher, select a class. And as you can see, this will auto refresh for some additional data for that specific class. If I need to change that class or that instructor, I can click on this drop-down, and view additional information for that class. So, I find this is really helpful, especially for those of our viewers who are school administrators. They can view some of that additional detail for some of the other classes at the school.
Now for the organization. We'll be bringing this out just a little bit more. Now we're not going to look just at classes within our school, we want to look at different classes at other schools. You'll see that we have an arrow over here to the left of the school's name. When I click on that, this will open up my organization, and from here, you'll see I have all of the different schools within this organization. And when I click over, on the right over on reports for any specific class, or any specific school, I can view additional reports there. You'll see that I have reports here for the organization. Let me go ahead and click on that. And now I can see my Organization Study History here. And if I run that, again, I'll be able to run some more detail about the organization as a whole. I can click on this to view some of those filters there. And if I open that up, then again from here, I'll be able to see all of the schools within my organization. So, I did just want to mention that, because we do have some viewers who do have some of these other roles and I wanted to show these newer reports that we've just recently released.
Phil Crawford
Do you mind if I add something to that? I'm not in that role, but I can see how something like this would be super beneficial to someone who may be trying to get a program started at their school and they know someone who's already into it. Those type of reports can be something to kind of tip the scales in your favor for being able to make a relatively large purchase for a school to just get their program up and running. So, I definitely think this is something that would be beneficial. If you knew someone who was using TestOut and if they have this sort of data that's available to them as that high of an admin. I think this would be really beneficial in those financial talks because with schools there's oftentimes a lot of red tape and they'd like to see the data. And if you're just starting out, you don't have any. So being able to access this from someone else who has it, would be super benefit.
Allan Escobar
Awesome. Thank you so much for that. Let's go ahead and talk about our next report, then, over on the instructor side, which is the Specific Resource Scores by Class Report. This one will be able to give you some detail about a specific resource at a time. So, you'll see here, when we click on that Resource drop-down, you'll be able to select a resource. In this case, we looked at activity 1.2.7, and then from here, we'll be able to see some more detail about what the students are scoring on that specific activity or resource. Another thing that you'll notice here apart from the scores, is the number of attempts. So, if you wanted to see how many attempts student took on any resource, you can run that. And to the right of that, you'll see the different scores. We have the latest score, the highest score, and the lowest score, and an average score. For the first three scores there, you can click on those hot links again to view that student's lab or exam report on that activity. So, that is really helpful. So for those asking how can I see how many attempts my students have made on a particular activity? This is where we will find that. But I wanted to ask the panel, how do you guys use this specific report?
Laurie Seeder
It's the same thing with how much time they spent. “Well, I did it 4 or 5 times, and I'm not getting the answer.” And I can go in and look. I have one girl who was doing one of the security labs and she was just having a heck of a time with it. And she told me, “I've tried it again and again, and again, and again.” And I went and I looked at it, and it showed, yeah. She was. And she was missing one step, and we found the step. She was looking at the wrong taskbar. She was looking at the one at her on her computer and not on the LabSim. Being able to see how many times they've attempted something, whether it's students that I have that have the IEPs, I expect to see more than one try on some of them. On others, I expect to see one try and have them have it finished fairly quickly. So, it's a good resource to be able to see. Again, are they telling the truth, or am I being fed something?
Martin, Gaylonda
I use this particular report when I had parents come for Parent Night, and they wanted to know how their child was progressing in the class. And I showed the parent because I had individually pulled that particular person's name, and they were able to see. It showed them how many attempts and then I showed them how long as far as minutes wise. The parents were able to have a good eye opener and they can see what the student is also completing and doing. So, the communication lines were very good when I was able to show the parent.
Phil Crawford
For me, I use this one specifically when I'm transferring grades from here to my learning management system. Either at the end of the week or when I start migrating, I put all of the different resources inside of my gradebook. And then I use this to look at a specific resource. And then relay those grades, either the latest score or the highest score, depending on what that is. I like to say that a lot of the times that the latest score and the high score are the same. It's really easy to switch between all of the different resources. And I only have one kind of score to focus on so I don't get confused. If you're using the class gradebook, you kind of see the whole view and you see all of the resources as well as the latest in organizing it. This is just the micro view of one specific resource. So, it's really easy for me to relate it back to my gradebook.
Stevie George
Great, thank you. And let's go ahead and exit that report. I know, Gaylonda, you talked about individual information, and that's where we’re going to head to next here which is actually this Individual Scores by Product Report. This is a great report for just individual because it shows one student at a time. It defaults to my first student alphabetically in my class, but I could look up anybody. And this is also a great place to look for more detail on the specific students by clicking lessons and videos as well. This one, the thing that I like is, if you do have parent teacher conference, or other meetings specifically with parents, this is only showing the one student at a time, instead of anybody else. So, you don't have to worry about them seeing other students' scores. But let's find out from our panel, how do you guys use this?
Laurie Seeder
I had a student just this past semester, she had to take an incomplete and two of her classes were on TestOut. And I was able to get into this report and see, when was the last time she did work and had she done any work? Because she was obviously at her house, and I was at my house because it was Winter Break. And I would go and check it every week and hadn't seen anything done. I looked at her other class, because I'm the school administrator, so I could see her grades in her other class. She hadn't done anything. So, I could send her e-mails and keep up on top of her and say, “you only have until February 4th to complete all of this but you haven't done anything. What's going on?” And, so, I was able to send her e-mails every week. I really liked this report for showing individual students, and I've had some of them come up and ask me, “Can I see my scores?” Instead of seeing it in a line, they can see it up and down.
Phil Crawford
Yeah, I haven't actually used this report in this view, but I do like it for the same application as the other report. And I actually like it a little bit better for the reason that I've already mentioned because you can vertically see what's going on. So, for me, this is a first for seeing this report. I will definitely be using it in the future when I do my conferences with students because they can definitely see any sort of blank lines. We can both see the same thing, you know, “this is a resource you haven't done yet, or is everything OK?” So, for me, for that conference on Fridays, this'll be the thing that I look at.
Stevie George
Great. And one thing I do want to point out, Gaylonda before you have any comments on this particular report, but this is also the same data that students have in their own personal account. They can look up in their score sheet on their reports, they can look up how they're doing, how much they've done. They see all of this same detail: how many attempts they've made, the time they spend, these four different scores. They only see scores for themselves obviously while as an instructor, you can see scores for any of the students. But this is the same detail that is available for students. Let me switch over to my Office report here. And, I'm going to select a student here. I like to select lessons and videos here, because this shows a bigger picture, and because this group started with PowerPoint, I'm simply going to scroll down here to PowerPoint. Gaylonda, is this one that you've been looking at all?
Martin, Gaylonda
Actually, I have, I use this often when I call my students to my desk privately to let them know, “I'm watching you.” I give them the momentum to continue because I really don't want them to be lagging behind. I have a lot of students, you know, who may get the virus, and then they come back, and then I give them a little leeway because I want everybody to be on the same board. I don't want everybody to be on different levels. And so, I give them the big picture to see where they are, and you can track it. I didn't know they had the access but I was actually calling them individually to show them. But this is great. I like it.
Stevie George
Alright, so again, this is a report students have, that you have access to. And I love that. I love that you can pretty much make the student accountable for their work because you can see exactly what they're doing and help them understand when you are seeing it, that they're more likely to want to be doing their work. As they know instructors are really paying attention to what they are doing.
Alright, Allan, I think you have some more organizational report data that you want to show us, and then we'll come back, and we'll talk about this certification practice exam, as well. So, let's go ahead and look at some of the Org Reports that we have on the individual student side of things.
Allan Escobar
Alright. Perfect. So, like I was showing earlier, the different admins have additional rights to more reports, and so, here we are looking at the TestOut Institute of Learning at Pleasant Grove. Like I showed earlier, you can click here on Reports over to the right to view additional information for that school. And we were looking at the Individual Scores by Product for a class. Now, we're going to go ahead and look at that for the whole school. When I click on that, now you'll see that we have the student field. At this point, I can type in any student's name that's in that school. And then, I can select that student's name. And then we get some of that detail that we were looking at earlier. Let's go ahead and change the products first, and then from here, I'll just scroll down and view some of that additional detail that we were looking at before. And now, if we need to look at a different student, we can click on that, and I know this next student is in a different class, and then when I scroll down, I can view, again, some of the additional details. So, again, we're just looking at the different report rights that the different roles will have. And so, this is one of those reports that a school administrator can run as they're viewing some reports for the school.
Stevie George
So, we're going to finish by talking about this last report on our list here that we wanted to cover today, which is the Certification Practice Exam Scores. And this one, I think, is really important. Now, I don't have much data on my end for this particular report, but what I've done is I've run some live data, but I've obviously removed any student names. I find that sometimes instructors are not aware that we have this great report that's going to help them understand if the students are really preparing for certification, and how they're working on that, or towards that, I should say. And Phil, I know that you're big on getting students certified. So, tell me what this report does for you.
Phil Crawford
Well, for me, it's been an invaluable tool. I often don't look at all of the practice exams. I look at them individually. It's my gage of how much time they've actually spent. Because doing any one of these attempts for any one of these tests, is at least an hour. Like, there's no way to get around it. It is definitely an hour or more of time, and I can tell you looking at my data now, I have a student who scored perfectly, who has done this PC Pro certification practice exam at least seven times. And two of those times were in class, but the other five were outside of class, and on his own time. I have a student in here who barely passed, and he only took the certification exam twice. So, it's validation that what we've actually done over the year, and how we've prepared over the year has had a real impact on the exams.
Laurie Seeder
I was trying to get it so that I could see my reports. And this is one of them that I just brought up. And last semester, one of my students, he’s a foreign student, and he took the certification exam last semester and he missed passing by, I think, 1 or 2 questions, and he really wanted to pass it. And I can see in here, he tried it seven times until he got a 90%. And he came to me, that same day, later that morning and he took the test again. And he got his certification and he called his daddy in his country and said, “I passed it, I did it, I did it!” And I can see this is really good for those students that say, “how can I practice? How can I know what to do?” And I've tried telling them to take the certification practice test, especially for the classes that I don't teach. Being able to see those who have and those who haven't. I can talk to my adjuncts and say, “Push this one, push this one, push this one.” So, I like this resource a lot, as well. Testing is doing so well.
Stevie George
The other thing I want to point out, maybe, for some that aren't familiar, TestOut has a certification, as well as the other industry certification. In this case, we're looking at our PC Pro or A+ as the cases here. So, you will see scores for each of them. And the other thing that I like about this report, you don't see the scroll bar on the bottom here, but there's a scroll bar that would allow you to move to the right, so you get to see all the attempts and all of the scores. And hopefully, you can see some progression as students are going through. This particular report, of course, would be for one of our IT certifications. Whereas this next report would be for one of either our Office certification or a Microsoft certification. So, what's outlined here would be all for one student, depending on which one they're using. This was the one that I wanted to show, here is the progression. You can see the first attempt score. The second, you can see each time they're taking it, they're getting a little bit better. And that's what we want to see, obviously, in preparation for certification, is that as students are doing these, they're improving along the way. Gaylonda, did you have students that are preparing for certification then?
Martin, Gaylonda
I do, but one thing, to my surprise, is that the certification that I use here at Chalmette is Certiport. I didn't know to utilize the one TestOut has. And so, if that's something I can use, I definitely want to use it to kind of prepare the students one-on-one here. We just have it called the industry-based credentials here, for our students. I’ll definitely start using it now.
Laurie Seeder
Gaylonda, with the students taking the different certs and using Certiport. The industry-based credentials that you mentioned, that's the thing that I'm trying to get all of the classes from TestOut on there, and Microsoft Office is on there. It's the Desktop Pro, and you can have your students take certification, and it's recognized here in Louisiana. I don't think Office Pro is, but I know Desktop Pro is and I saw a lot of the Certiports that are offered. And one of the great things about this is, we can prove to our powers that be in the governor's office, that this is something that we need, and this is why we need it. Gaylonda, you know, we're like 48th in the nation, education wise. And if we can prove to the state that this is really helping our students and they're getting the jobs, then I say, we go for it. We build up TestOut even harder than I am because I got TestOut all over the place.
Martin, Gaylonda
I definitely agree we do use Certiport. But I didn't know that the certification test could be taken in TestOut to help prepare the kids. Now that I know, I want to use it. I'm the new kid on the block, but I want to get on board with it. Anything that I can give my kids and get them prepared. I definitely want to do that.
Stevie George
Talking about the TestOut certification is probably a topic for another day but we certainly do have TestOut certifications for each of our products. Which actually leads me right into this other item that I wanted to talk about. So, I'm glad that you brought that up. We actually want to hear from everybody in our audience. We want to know what topics would you like to see discussed in the future, and would you be willing to participate in a session with us? If you have ideas of what you would like to hear in the future, or if you would be happy to help out, then please contact us at training@testout.com. Alan, do you have any other questions by chance for any of our people today?
Allan Escobar
Honestly, I don't think I have any other questions. I just want to say you three are amazing. I can tell that you're using these reports in a great way to help your students be successful in their classes, and so I'm just excited for your students, they’re lucky to have you, definitely.
Laurie Seeder
Maybe I for one would, well, you know me, I love TestOut and anytime I can talk about it, I will. So let me know when you want to do another one.
Martin, Gaylonda
Thank you for the opportunity to share and I did learn something new today. So, thank you so much Allan and Stevie and to the panelists. That's all for today. Thank you.
Phil Crawford
Yeah, just thank you guys. Appreciate the opportunity.
Stevie George
Thank you everybody for joining. You guys are the ones that make this work for us. Otherwise, we couldn't have a teacher's lounge without teachers. So, thank you so much for your time. And everybody, take care, and enjoy your evening. Bye, bye, everybody.
*Comments were edited for length and clarity.