Manage Evaluation

Evaluation dashboard

The Evaluation dashboard provides a summary of each assessment and the grades per assessment, course, and student. Each assessment in your course is listed.

In each assessment line, you can view the assessment name.

We can preview the student requests, if any.

The average grade of the assessment is displayed after you have published the results (e.g., Assignments 1, 2).

Under Users, we see the number of students who have started the assessment (e.g., 2 students for Self-test 1).

We also see the number of students who have submitted the assessment (e.g., 2 students for Self-test 1).

Lastly, we see the total number of enrolled students (e.g., 3 students for Self-test 1).

The Final Grade icon is where we access the final course grade reports and publish the overall results.

Reports: Assessment, Student, and Course-level

SYLVA provides summary grade reports for each assessment, student, and course.

We will preview each type of report.

Assessment-level reports

View the student performance for each assessment by clicking the respective grade button on the far righthand side of each assessment line. Click Start Grading.

The summary report will open after the grading is complete.

The average performance and the number of students who passed is provided.

The Performance Overview displays the performance distribution of the assessment by points.

The Question Overview shows the average, minimum, and maximum points per question.

Student Distribution displays the performance distribution by students.

The Student List provides the ranked performance of each individual student.

For assessments that have not yet been published, you will see the button Publish at the bottom righthand side of the screen. The students will only get to see their grades for the assessment after you click Publish.

Student-level reports

On the same evaluation overview page, we can view the individual performance for each student by clicking the student’s name under Student List. We see the student’s personal grading report just as the student would see.

The top displays the student's performance average.

The Question Overview shows the number of points awarded to the student from the total points achievable. The class average, minimum, and maximum points per question are displayed.

The Comparison section displays where the student's performance falls among the performance distribution of the entire class.

Lastly, students see the option to submit a student request. Students usually submit a student request if they have follow up questions about the assessment or view a discrepancy in the grading.

Course-level reports

Aggregate grades of all assessments are presented in the final results summary. After we publish all assessment grades, we view the final results by clicking the Final Grade icon.

The final grade reports for the course are similar to the individual assessment reports.

The class average, percentage of passing students, and the number of students who failed the course are displayed. The benchmark values are adjustable based on your grading system.

The Performance Overview displays the performance distribution of the students by grade.

The Assessment Overview shows the assessment weight of the total grade and the average performance of the entire class.

The Student Distribution displays the overall performance distribution by students.

Lastly, the Student List provides the ranked performance of all students.

We can publish the grades by clicking Publish at the bottom. The students will then be able to see their final results for the course!

Changing grades

After assessments are completed by students, it is possible to change the grading. We can revise the grading both before and after we publish the grades.

Open the assessment that you would like to change the grading for.

Under the Question Overview, click the question to change.

The question section will expand, and the grade editor will open. (If you would like to abort changing the grading, click on the question line again to close the editor.)

In the grade editor, there is the option to change the correct answer and awarded points for the question. Additionally there is a field to provide an explanation for the students regarding the grade change.

Click Confirm changes to save the revision. Then click Submit.

The assessment is instantaneously regraded. If there is an error during the regrading process, open the assessment again and click Re-grade at the bottom of the assessment results page.

We must publish the grades in order for students to see their updated grades. This step is required even if the grades were already previously published. Clicking publish after changing the grading will overwrite and update the previous grades and add a note with the changes in the student reports.

We simply publish grades by clicking Publish on the bottom toolbar.

Handling student requests

On the Administration dashboard, student requests will appear next to the assessment name (if any). In our example, assignment 2 has 3 student requests.

Click Student Requests(3) to view them.

Click each student request line to view each request individually. There is the option to reject, review, or accept the request.

• Reject - When the request is rejected, the student will see that it was rejected. The grading will not change.
• Review - The student will see the question has been reviewed. The grading will not change. This case is useful for off-topic or unclear requests that are not relevant to grade change requests.
• Accept - You will have the option to immediately change the grading for this specific student or for the entire class. For student-specific updates, that student will see the update on their grade report. For entire-class updates, every student will see a notification regarding the grade update.

Reject

For cases where the student request does not suffice for a grade change, we Reject the request.

On the student request form, select your decision as Reject and click Continue.

The Summary section will open. Provide a response to the student regarding your decision for their request.

Then click Submit.

The student will see the decision on their summary grade report under Requests. The grading will not change.

Review

For cases with off-topic or unclear requests, you can use the Review status. Additionally, if many students report the same problem, you can adjust all students' grading with one request and then notify the other students through their requests that the case was reviewed and/or changed.

On the student request form, click Review.

Then provide your reply to the student.

The student will receive a notification on their Evaluation dashboard with your reply.

Accept

Accepting a student request means we will modify the grading.

Click Accept then Continue.

There are four options for the grade modification:‍

1. Modifications for All students - Change grading points

We adjust the points awarded for individual questions for the entire class. This option will navigate us to assessment grade report to use the Change Grade function.

This feature can be used when questions turn out to be harder or easier than initially expected by the educator. Changing the points for particular questions will have an impact on the relative weight with respect to the calculation of the performance. To preserve fairness, the change will impact all the students in the same way.

2. Modifications for All students - Change assessment weight

We adjust the weight of the entire assessment for the entire course. This option will navigate us to the assessment schedule where we can change the weight of the assessment.

In situations where it turned out that an assessment was too hard or easy, the educator may change the weight of the assessment to make it count more or less (or not at all by setting the weight to zero) towards the final grade. To preserve fairness, the change will impact all the students in the same way.

3. Modifications for this student/assessment only - Modify assessment weight for this student

We adjust the student's grade by modifying the weight of the entire assessment.

This is useful, for instance, if a student has a valid reason why he/she could not take/complete/solve the assessment due to exceptional reasons. The lecturer could make this assessment not count towards the final grade by setting the weight for this assessment and (only) this student to zero. Notice that for fairness reasons, this should only be used to handle exceptions.

4. Modifications for this student/assessment only - Modify student grades

We adjust the student's grade by modifying the points awarded for individual questions.

If a student provides valid reasons why he/she could not solve a particular question, this feature can be used to adjust the points of the question for this student only. Notice that for fairness reasons, this should only be used to handle exceptions.

In our example, let's modify the individual student's grade for question 5. We simply modify the points awarded to the student for question 5 from 0 to 1 point.

Click Continue.

We see the information that will be shared with the student. We include an optional response to the student and click Submit.

The student will immediately see their grade change reflect in their report. Under the Student Request section, there will be information about the grade modifications made.

Recap

Assessing student performance is simplified with the summary grade reports. The Evaluation dashboard allows us to view student and class performance. Summary reports for each assessment, student, and the entire course allow us to assess how well the class understands the learning concepts. Changing the grades due to grading errors is simple, especially since the assessments are automatically regraded. Should students have any questions concerning the results, they can submit student requests that are easily managed on the dashboard.