A User Guide
to the WebClass
Introduction:.................................................................................................................. 1
Access To The Placement System................................................................................. 2
Setting Up Your Placement Exam Environment.............................................................. 3
Creating an Exam.......................................................................................................... 6
Creating an Exam Session.............................................................................................. 8
Editing a Session..................................................................................................... 12
Cloning a Session.................................................................................................... 12
Verifying the session password................................................................................ 12
Administering a Proctored Session of a Placement Exam.............................................. 16
Information for the Proctor(s).................................................................................. 16
Information for the Student(s) at Exam Time............................................................. 17
Administering a session................................................................................................ 18
Make sure the site has been prepared...................................................................... 18
Administration Procedures....................................................................................... 20
Student Identification............................................................................................... 21
End of the Session.................................................................................................. 21
Managing Placement Exam Data.................................................................................. 22
Direct Viewing........................................................................................................ 22
To view/retrieve data from all sessions of an exam.................................................... 22
To view/retrieve data from a single session............................................................... 23
Format of the Data...................................................................................................... 24
How to Share Placement Exam Data........................................................................... 25
Extending Report Reading permission to others........................................................ 25
Additional Information Resources................................................................................ 29
Information for Students Prior To the Exam:............................................................. 29
Introduction:
The as-yet unnamed
placement examination service on the University of Kentucky Mathematical
Sciences “mathclass.org” web site is a new application of the WebClass technology
developed by Ken Kubota and Lana Kaliko.
The program has been supported by
the
WebClass has for years provided the technical backbone for
the Kentucky Early Mathematics Testing Program (KEMTP). It currently provides web-based homework
support for approximately 5000 math and Spanish students per semester. The new placement system takes advantage of recent
extensions of WebClass to accommodate
secure online testing for mathematics distance learning. As with WebClass itself, access to the
placement program is freely available to any
Access To The
Placement System
In order to create, install, and administer any materials on the WebClass system one must first acquire a WebClass account and then arrange for that account to be granted the necessary privileges. Historically these accounts were called WHS[5] accounts and the terminology persists. Anyone can create a WHS account for him/herself by going to www.mathclass.org , selecting “Register in WHS”, and completing the registration form. When the account is created, use it to login to WHS, then select the “Help” link at the top of the page and send a message requesting Teacher-level access. To repeat, here are first steps
First: Acquire An Account and Permissions
•
You need a WHS account. If you don’t already have one
then go to www.mathclass.org
->”Register in WHS”
and create your account.
–
This is a basic student account. See www.mathclass.org-> For Students for information on the basic account
•
Login to your new account
– When you login the first time the WebClass system will check to see if you have the necessary browser plugins and fonts needed to display mathematics. If they are not present a screen will open which provides links where you can acquire and install them. They are free.
– Installing the plugins does require system access to the computer. If you are using a school computer it is likely that you will need to have one of the IT system people do the plugin installation.
•
This only needs to be done once
• Select “Help” at upper right on the header and request that your account be upgraded to “teacher”
– This step can be done before installing the plugins.
– You will be informed by email when the account permissions are set.
– Teachers (actually teacher accounts) create and administer WHS classes (including placement exams) using class lists of materials prepared by WHS authors
–
See www.mathclass.org
-> For instructors for information on the teacher/instructor account
• There are no charges or fees of any kind associated with these accounts
Note: If you plan to do technical materials development you will also need Author-level access. The fact is, however, that the vast majority of users devote their time and energy to the effective use of instruments that have already been developed[6] and tested - usually by teams of colleagues that include WHS authors. Thus, in what follows we will assume that the user intends to use extant placement exams.
Setting Up Your Placement Exam
Environment
As noted in the introduction the placement examination system is based on the WebClass instructional support system in which the basic unit is the class. Classes are created and administered by teachers (i.e. people with teacher-level accounts).
In the usual, instructional format, students (people with the basic account) are formally registered in these classes and they participate in activities (primarily web-based homework) which are largely managed by the technology once they are set up. The details of class creation and management are at https://www.mathclass.org/WebPages/Pages/19/InstructorGuideToWHS.htm which can also be accessed via the For Instructors link under WHS Guides on the main www.mathclass.org page. The reader will find, however, that most of the information there is concerned with the management of registered students in classes and until one is ready to share placement exam results one need be concerned only with the formalism of creating a class and adjusting a few parameters.
First create a placement class. One class will generally support numerous exams so one will certainly suffice to get started. To create your placement class:
- Login to your teacher account and select “Tools” -> “Instructor Tools”
- Depending on whether your account has been used before you will get a view like one of the following. In either case select “Instructor Tools” from the menu. If the menu is not visible press “Show Menu”.
- The class management page will open up. Select “New Class” at the “Select Class” Menu. The following image indicates the class parameters to be made.
- Do not make the class name too long as it will serve as a preface for all of your exam listings.
- If your school is not listed in the “School” menu then use the help system to request that it be added. You can temporarily select any school in the list as any class parameter can be changed at any time by the class owner.
- There is no need to include a class homepage.
- Be sure to select “No self-enrollment” to keep students and browsers from confusing this with a class in the regular instructional program.
- For the purpose of this tutorial select Eakin’s Placement Test List for the class list. In general, unless you develop your own materials you will use lists created by development teams. The placement program or the individual development teams will provide the list names and arrange access.
- When done press “Create Class”.
- The
message “Class created successfully” should appear under the class name.
Creating an
Exam
Creating an exam is something like acquiring a copy of an exam from a
colleague and doing some minor editing to get it ready to give to your class or
classes. The analogues of scheduling,
administration, and grading will remain to be done.
To create an exam, login to your account and select “Instructor Tools” under your placement class in the main menu. Alternatively, select “Instructor Tools” at the general “Tools” menu and then select your placement class. If you have just created your placement class you will already be there. Press “List Updates and Hand Grading”
Your class comes with a collection of exams specified by the
current list (recall that the list can be changed). There is a set of exam parameters that must
be set for each exam that you use. These can be changed at any time.
It is possible for you to change some of
the exam parameters set by the list author.
However it is strongly suggested that you use the author’s settings at
first.
The most important author parameter at first is the expiration date. This is
the latest date that the exam can be used from that list.
- Select
the desired exam from the list in the Name
menu. Knowing which item to select
will require information about the list
which would be supplied by the author or the placement exam
program.
- The item Date, Version, and Hand Graded Result Field are displayed when the item is selected.
- The Date is included in the Name display. This is the latest
expiration date available for the exam.
As set by the list author it is intended to be an expiration date for the particular exam. Although it can be overridden at this
point it should generally be left as set.
- The Teacher
Only checkbox MUST
BE CHECKED. If it is not checked then the exam will be displayed to
anyone enrolled in the class. This can cause security problems if not
checked.
- The Version determines whether people taking the exam get personal
versions or whether everyone
taking the exam gets the same version. If the version is set to
“0” then everyone will get a personal version of the exam. If it is set
to a positive integer then that
version is the default for all sessions of the exam. This is usually left at
“0” . We will see that, in
this case, versions can still be set for individual sessions.
- The Handgraded Result Field must be set at “Exam x” where
0<x<5 and should be left as set by the list author.
If it is set to either of the
other possible types (“HG Homework” or “None”) then the item will not
work as an exam.
- When the parameters are selected, press Modify Assignment
Creating an Exam Session
Creating a
session of an exam is the process of actually scheduling a specific exam to be
taken at a particular place and time.
- Login
to your account, select “Instructor Tools”
on the menu - either under your placement class or under Tools and then select your placement class.
Then select Exam Scheduling
- Select Create
New Session and then the particular exam for which you want to
schedule a session
- Configure the session by selecting or entering the various session parameters
- Session Exam
This is the particular exam that is to be administered in this session.
- The Session Name
is used to identify the exam. This
is the name that will appear (along with that of the placement class) in
the menu from which the student or
the exam proctor will select an exam for the student to take. The name has to be unique
- The Session
Password is used by a proctor to login on the Placement Exam page.
i.
The password is: (a)
not changeable, and (b) must be communicated to the proctor
before the exam session. Please use well constructed passwords and
record them securely at the time the session is created.
- The Session Date
specifies the day on which the exam session will be available. Specify it
in the format yyyy/mm/dd, e.g. 2007/02/28 for February 28, 2007.
- The Session Start
Time and Session End Time should be specified as in the format
hh:mm together with a selection of am or pm.
i.
The session will
actually appear on the main Placement Menu on mathclass.org at the Session Start Time. In proctored
settings the password has to be entered and the student must enter some basic
identification information before the test actually starts. This is of course,
analogous to handing out papers and making sure the student puts his/her name
on the paper before starting. The point is that the actual starting time for
the student to begin working on the exam will be later than this.
ii.
Any session
parameter can be changed prior to the Session Start Time. The start time cannot
be changed once the session has started.
iii.
The Session End Time
is the time beyond which students cannot begin the session. The session listing
disappears from the main menu at this time.
Students taking the exam during the session can, if permitted by the
proctor, continue beyond the
Session End Time provided they do not exit the session. The time of each
submission is recorded so it is possible from the session data to
identify students who were allowed extra time.
iv.
WARNING: The
Session Start Time will be that of the
server which is in
- The Session IP
field controls the computers from which the exam can be taken. For high stakes testing it is possible
in the system to specify the IP addresses of individual computer or groups of
computers from which an exam can be taken. For low stakes, proctored placement
testing this is generally not considered necessary and it is expected
that people will simply enter an asterisk (*) which acts as a “wildcard”
which will match any IP address
and says that, with the session password, the exam for this
session can be taken from any computer on the internet.
- The Session
Exam Code field controls the version of the exam questions presented
to the student. The code should not be numeric, but can
be any other character string, e.g. one could use the session name. If the string does NOT start with an
“x” or an “X” then every student in the session gets the same exam – the
one corresponding to the chosen code. If the string starts with an “x” or
an “X” then every student gets a different, randomly generated, version
of the exam.
When the Scheduling Form is complete press the Submit Session Information button. Note that you MUST press the button. A “Return” will not work. A “Session Scheduled” message will be returned.
Editing a
Session
At any time prior to the Session Start Time you can edit any of the session parameters (Except the Session Name) by selecting the session in the Session menu, pressing Edit Session. Once changes are made, press the “Submit Session Information” button, as before.
Cloning a Session
Cloning a session is just like editing a session but with the ability (indeed the requirement) to change the name and thus create a new session. It is very likely that multiple sessions of a particular placement exam will be given with very similar parameters. For instance there may be planned placement sessions of the same exam on May 4 at 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, and 4:00 pm. Once the first one is set up the information for the others would be very similar. Cloning makes it a simple matter to edit a copy of the first one to create the others. Note that if you do not change the name then the new session name will be created by adding a counter to the original.
Verifying the session password
To verify a session password one temporarily changes the day and time to the present and goes through the actual process of opening the exam for a student. This will cause the exam to appear on the main menu for a short time but without the password a person cannot access the exam. The idea is to verify that a person with the password can.
A. After
creating the session, select it in the session menu on the Exam Scheduling page
and press the Edit Session button.
Any parameter other than the session name and password can be changed.
B. Change
the date to the current date, the Session Start
Time to one in the very near future, change the Session End Time to a minute or two later
and press the Submit Session Information
button..
C. Close
the Exam Scheduling window and connect to www.mathclass.org
in a separate browser window ( or just re-direct the Exam Scheduling window to www.mathclass.org
). At mathclass.org click on Placement
Exams. The exam will appear in the
menu if the new Start Time has passed. If it hasn’t, refresh the screen as soon as the Start Time
has arrived. Select the exam, enter the
password, and press Proctor Login.
D. If
the password is good then the following information screen will appear. If it
does, close the screen.
E. Whether
the password is good or bad return to Instructor Tools -> Exam Scheduling
and select the session for auditing. If you do this before the new session has
expired then you will get a screen like the following.
F. Finally, if the password is good then just reset the time and date to the original and submit. If the password is bad then clone the session (see below) and enter the desired password. Change the name slightly or, upon submission, the system will simply add a counter to the name of the original. Thus the first clone of 28April:4pm would be 28April:4pm.1. However, the name of the clone can be a slight change of the original (e.g. April28:4pm ) to avoid this. Once the clone is created go back to the bad session and set its date far in the past.
G. Now test the clone.
Administering a Proctored Session of a Placement Exam
In order for it to be independently useful to exam session proctors, some of the information in this section is repetitious of information provided, explicitly or implicitly, in the previous sections.
Information for the Proctor(s)
Placement Tests are administered in “Sessions”. Each session has several critical parameters which must be provided to the proctor well in advance of the session. The session are:
- The Session Name . This is what will appear on the “Session Name” menu at
www.mathclass.org -> Placement Exams
- The Session Date which is, of
course, the date of the particular exam
- A Session
Start and Session End times
- Sessions
will not appear on the Placement Exams menu before the Session
Start Time on the Session Date
nor after the Session End Time on the Session Date. Thus some time has to be allocated for
logistics. A typical model is for “hour” exams be designed for 50 minutes
with 10 minutes assumed sufficient for students to get started and the
exam ending precisely on the hour. The proctor needs to be aware of the
timing assumptions that are built into the exam and session.
- Proctors
have no control over start and stop times so there is no real provision
for stopping a restarting a session (e.g. if a fire alarm goes off). However if a session is not
terminated then exams started during the session may be completed and
submitted even after the session is expired. The system will check
and save the results but they would not be included in “official”
results and would have to be treated separately by advisors who have
full information on the circumstances.
Thus proctors will need to note any special cases in which
students were allowed extra time.
- A session
password. Without the password the session cannot
be opened. The proctor needs to know the password and be assured that it
has been verified as the correct one for the particular session.
- A
set of restrictions on IP addresses from which the test can be
accessed. This is currently
uncommon but the proctor needs to know explicitly in either case.
- An associated version of the underlying test . This determines whether everyone gets the same test or whether there are individual versions for each person taking the test.
Beyond the physical location(s) of the session, proctors must be provided (a)-(d) well before the examination.
Restrictions (e) are rare for placement exams so the proctor
should definitely know of any that have been imposed. It is good practice to
re-assure the proctor even if there are none since this information could be
critical to dealing with technical problems that might arise.
Verification
of exam information by the proctor
By analogy to verifying the exam time and place and then going by the examination room and checking that the key provided actually fits, the proctor can, within 24 hours of an exam session go to www.mathclass.org -> Placement Exams, select the exam, and test the password. If the password is valid a message is displayed which contains session information such as the exam and time.
Information for the Student(s) at Exam Time
Generally, students are sophisticated users of technology and
there is no need to provide any sort of technology orientation. Beyond this, there is a practice exam
available on the mathclass.org -> Placement Examinations page. If at all possible students should know
in advance that they are to take a placement exam and be directed to the
practice examination page.
Upon submission, students get a report back in the form of a raw score and table of entries corresponding to problems. A green entry indicates that the correct answer to the problem was submitted
Because the system immediately returns students need to be told that they are permitted that, once they have started an exam, they can submit it for grading only once. Were they permitted to submit a second time they would do so knowing which of their previous answers were correct and be given a choice to avoid for the others.
In the event that a student exam is inadvertently submitted very early then the proctor can, at his/her discretion permit use the password to start another exam for the student.
Administering a session
Make sure the site has been prepared
Few things in life are more stressful than having a significant number of students and instructors arrive to find that the exam room is locked. Of course that could happen with placement exams but here there is the added possibility that the technology fails to function as expected. For these exams the proctor (or someone working with the proctor) should exercise (in addition to those associated with any exam) exercise the following precautions in collaboration with the local IT people:
- Several
days in advance make sure that the computers in the test site are equipped
with a supported browser and that the proper plugins have been
installed. The following is taken
from the FAQ which is available
under “General” on the menu after on logs in at www.mathclass.org
The recommended browsers are:
- Mozilla
Firefox 1.5 or later for Windows. One can download this browser for free
from http://www.mozilla.com.
If the browser suggests that you download fonts, you should download them
-- they can be downloaded from http://www.mozilla.org/projects/mathml/fonts/"
Versions of Mozilla Firefox prior
to 1.5 as well as the old Mozilla browser browser will not work correctly with
this website.
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later for Windows. This can be downloaded for free from http://www.microsoft.com. In order to make this browser work with this website, you will need to install both of the following plugins:
i. Design Science MathPlayer which can be downloaded for free from http://www.dessci.com/.
ii. Adobe SVG Viewer which can be downloaded for free from http://www.adobe.com/svg/.
If the mathematical expressions
still do not render correctly in Internet Explorer, you should check that
https://www.mathclass.org/ is in a Security Zone in which the ActiveX controls
and plug-ins Binary and script behaviors is set to Enable. This might require
that you put the website in the Intranet zone (or Trusted Sites zone) depending
on how your policies are set up.
Versions of Internet Explorer for
Windows earlier than version 6 will not work correctly with this website.
- MacOS
X users should should know that this website will not work properly with
either Safari or Internet Explorer for mac. Usably correct display can be
obtained by using Firefox 1.5 or later from http://www.mozilla.com
But, you must also download the fonts. After
they are downloaded, double click on them to open them - look for Whs
fonts, and copy and paste these to your font folder. The font folder is
typically on the local hard drive as /Users/user/Library/Fonts where user
is your user name on the mac or the system font directory is
/Library/Fonts
- Make sure that the proctor has the necessary access to the machines and can bring up an exam. All that is required is that the proctor be able to open a supported browser on each machine , connect to www.mathclass.org and bring up the practice exam. Local security configurations have been known to exclude www.mathclass.org and popup blocking can prevent the test from coming up.
Administration Procedures
There are numerous models for exam administration but the
conceptualization under which the system was designed is one in which the
student is seated at a computer on which a browser session is already running
with www.mathclass.org->Placement
Exams selected. Once the Session Time arrives the proctor, or
an assistant, selects the exam session and enters the session password. This opens the exam registration for the
student. The student then enters his/her information and proceeds to take the
exam. This model is illustrated as
follows.
Obviously, a significant amount of effort could be saved by providing the students with the password and letting them open the session themselves. This is not unreasonable if the session password is unique (i.e. not that of any other session), the exam site is secure, students cannot leave until the test is over, and students cannot email, phone, or text message before the session end time. The problem is that under other circumstances and if the session IP addresses are not specified then someone outside the session could, in principle, get the password and take the exam on behalf of someone in the session. While there would be an electronic trail left an electronic “ringer” no red flag would automatically go up in such a situation.
Student Identification
The Placement System does not include pre-registration so all of the information linking a particular student to a submission of an exam in a session is that provided by the student in the first few minutes of the session. The proctor is the only means to independently verify that information provided by the student does, in fact, uniquely identify him or her. In a school setting where all of the students are known personally to the proctor this presents no problem. Barring such familiarity there will have to be a means for the proctor to check identity. The only direct mechanism provided by the system is the display of the student name and identifier in the header at the top of his her exam. The following is an example of the header for one student “Mary Littlelamb” with student identifier “0002”. Assuming the testing environment is designed to permit it, the proctor proctor(s) can, for instance, circulate among the students as they are taking the test, check an identity document, and by inspection verify consistency with that entered on the exam.
End of the Session
There is no technical “cleanup” once the session has expired. Students should be encouraged to kill the browser session as they leave. As noted above, the system does not automatically shut down a session when the Session Stop Time is reached. At that time the session does drop off the main menu but once a student starts an exam he/she can continue past the Session Start Time if permitted by the proctor but a record is kept of the time and the results would be rejected in the absence of an explanation by the proctor.
Proctors in general do not have access to the overall results of the session unless they are a member of the placement class with report reading privileges.
Managing
Placement Exam Data
Complete placement exam data can be viewed directly and/or downloaded as a “.csv” file which can be imported directly into spreadsheet or database software.
To view session results you must:
a) be the owner of the placement class in which the session was created, or
b) be a member of the class with report reading privileges
• Follow the For Instructors link under WHS Guides at www.mathclass.org and see the section “Assigning class privileges, attributes, and membership” for information on assigning class privileges.
If you satisfy either (a) or (b) then you can view session results by logging into www.mathclass.org , Instructor Tools for the placement class and then selecting Exam Results
For a particular exam
you can view or retrieve spreadsheets of results for:
• All students in all sessions of the exam.
• All students or students with a given last name who took the exam in a particular session
• Results for all students in all sessions who took an exam between two specified dates.
Examples:
To view/retrieve data from all sessions of an
exam
To view/retrieve
data from a single session, select the exam and then the session and press View or Download
Analogously, to view or download results for all students with a given last name for all sessions of an exam: select only the exam ( do not select a session), enter the last name, and press View or Download. If the exam and a particular session are selected then the results for all students with that last name with results in that session can be viewed or downloaded. To view or download results for sessions between two specified dates , enter the dates in the fields provided.
Format of the
Data
The format of the data is generally evident from the header information. However a few terms require explanation:
· The multiplicity is the number of alternative versions for each question. “5” is the most common but numbers as high as “25” are not uncommon.
· The “base” is the number of non-graded “questions”. This is a parameter that, among other things, allows for survey-type questions to do things like collect demographic information on the group of students taking the exam.
· Generally base is equal to “1” with the “non-graded” part being any descriptive information displayed at the top of the exam (e.g the name of the exam).
· numQues is the total number of questions, including the base.
• Number of actual test questions = numQues-base
· numRight = number of correctly answered questions. There are no answer for the base so this is number of exam questions answered correctly.
The base questions the last questions in the data. Thus for a 25-question placement exam with only the header information the numQues=26 and the sole base question is number 26. The view below is from an exam with 30 questions and a base of 1 and multiplicity 5 . The second student, Abby Viszla, had correct responses for 8 of the 30 questions. Abby missed questions 1 and 2 (Q1 and Q2) and got question 3 (Q3) right.
The view of the data is displayed following the form on the Exam Results page.
How to Share Placement Exam Data
Using the www.mathclass.org
interface, placement exam results are only available to owners of the
underlying placement exam classes and the members of those classes whom they
have afforded report reading privileges as described below. (See www.mathclass.org
-> For
instructors -> L. Assigning class privileges …” for details on assigning permissions.)
This gives two basic ways for a group of individuals to
share access to exam results.
- Have all exams within a common placement class
• one owner who creates, maintains the exams and sessions
– Viewing permission afforded others via class report reading privileges assigned by owner
•
This is a good approach within a single institution.
- Have different placement exam classes with sharing via cross-membership and report reading privileges
• This is a mechanism for cross-sharing among institutions
• Institutional owners exchange membership, report reading privileges in their placement classes
Extending
Report Reading permission to others.
Permissions relative to a class are granted and withdrawn by the class owner via tools on the Members page. To access the Members page of your class select the Members link under the class on the main WebClass menu
The result is a table of the individuals who are members of the class.
A person to be granted permissions relative to the class must first be granted membership in the class. Only individuals with WebClass accounts can be members of classes.
There is at the bottom of the
members page a user lookup. Enter a last
name or email address an press Lookup
Users to get a table of all WebClass accounts that match.
If the person you want to grant access is in the table then press the Add to Activity button to the left of his/her name.
This grants the person membership
in the class but with no privileges or
status as indicated by the blanks to the right.
To grant permission and standing to a class member, press Edit to the left of the
member’s name. This will open a table.
Check Certified, Registered,
then:
·
If you want to allow the individual to both
schedule exam sessions (from the class list)
and view the results of all exam sessions in the class, then check Rep
Reader and then press Update
· If you want to grant the individual permission to view exam results but do not want to grant permission to schedule exam sessions then check HwReader and then press Update
At this point the UKMath07 class
will appear on Ken’s main menu. However the Instructor Tools for UKMath07 will not. To view or download data from UKMath07
he will need to select the Instructor
Tools from under Tools on the
main menu and then select UKMath07.
At that point he presses Exam Results and has the same viewing
and downloading privileges as the owner.
Additional
Information Resources
Information for Students Prior To the Exam:
Taking a Placement
Exam on www.mathclass.org
The following are images of a brief set of
Power Point slides that are intended to support a very brief advanced
orientation for students.
Paul Eakin
April 30, 2007