Save Your Brain: 5 Ways to Track Comprehensive Assessment Digitally on CompTracker®

Comprehensive student assessment is essential to supporting well-rounded student success. Across programs and industries, these are the skills that are vital in shaping our future professionals. As an increasing number of assessment variables are tracked, staying on top of the volume of data becomes an exponential challenge – especially considering the oft geographical dispersion of a program’s students during practicum placements. This struggle with data management in holistic assessment becomes especially apparent once the reams of paper data need to be massaged and coerced into meaningful reporting results.

“It’s really easy to pick out the [assessment] standards with the reports.”

Rochelle Roberts, Lambton College Personal Support Worker Program Coordinator

Assessing Comprehensively on CompTracker®

There are 5 Aspects to Solid Comprehensive Student Assessment and each type can be tracked utilizing CompTracker’s® custom-built setups. Each assessment type is strong on its own but work even better when tracked together.

1. Meaningful Goals and Measure

Goals need to be transparently communicated and taught with the learning outcomes in mind. Thankfully, with CompTracker® it is possible for these goals to be tracked individually and/or simultaneously and completed as needed.

“We are always searching for ways to improve the quality of our processes and practices – especially when they result in better outcomes for our students.”

– Ms. Felita Kwan, Clinical Liaison Officer, Respiratory Therapy, the Michener Institute of Education at UHN®

2. Formative Feedback

Formative feedback needs to be meaningfully applied and should occur early, often, and throughout the learning process. With frequent feedback, instructors and preceptors can support students towards program goals quickly and transparently. On CompTracker®, that means being able to assess in ways that are long-term and yet adaptable to live changes from multiple users.

‘Our students have benefited from the opportunity of being able to accurately reflect and evaluate their own learning progress and adjusting their study strategies as necessary.”

Walter Tavares, Former Paramedic Program Coordinator, Centennial College

3. Summative Assessment

Summative Assessment can incorporate multiple perspectives (such as more than one assessor) and may include things like final essays and written or practical, final exams. CompTracker® uses a program’s specific documents in its setup which ensures that all assessments are customized and viewable only by the right people.

“Our instructors like it a lot better than the paper.”

Rochelle Roberts, Lambton College Personal Support Worker Program Coordinator

4. Performance Assessment

Performance assessment can include practical exams, e-portfolios, collaboration and communication in multiple forms, as well as critical and creative problem-solving. Performance assessments of these various types can be tracked live on CompTracker® via a digital tablet thus removing the work of later needing to input the assessment results. This feature has been proven to be quite useful across programs in both lab and simulation settings

“‘The benefit of this tracking system will prove beneficial to me, as a professor and coordinator of the programs in allowing me to focus on the students’ attention and their needs in fulfilling our course objectives.”

Kevin Branch MEd, BHSc. PHC, Former Coordinator, Paramedic Programs, Cambrian College

5. Student Ownership

Holistic assessment is designed with student self-assessment and peer assessment in mind¹, both of which are included to further improve student success. Self-assessment, in particular, works well to increase a sense of ownership by students while simultaneously enabling them to learn both independently and collaboratively in a complex world. With students now more self-driven, the entire assessment process is now much more manageable for the program coordinator.

 

“I’ve seen my students take more pride in ownership of their own education and achieving their goals.”

 Luc Simard, Simulation Technician, Collège Boréal

Summary

A comprehensive style of assessment empowers students to have a deeper and more meaningful understanding of both their strengths and areas for growth. Students are more in control, less stressed, and have greater success when the assessment is designed to be holistic. CompTracker® expertly works to simplify data administration of all comprehensive assessment types – whether students are right next to you or on the other side of the world. Great for students, coordinators, preceptors, and assessment in general, CompTracker® is a welcome addition to any program that involves complex skill assessments of all types.

“The transition was transparent and has saved countless hours of cross-referencing and validating, allowing me to focus on students and student retention. Needless to say, I am very pleased with the product and I am positive, that because of the tracking system we have in place with the use of CompTracker, this certainly aided the college in obtaining full accreditation status.”

Kevin Branch, MEd, BHSc. PHC; Former Coordinator, Paramedic Programs; Cambrian College

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This post was written by admin