The Standards-Based Gradebook – Beta
If you’ve noticed that Think Thank Thunk’s usual flow of poor editing and faulknerisms has slowed to an almost halt, it’s because I’ve been coding, also, thanks for noticing. Coding what? The Standards-Based Gradebook!
Here’s the goal: I want to develop a piece of software that better aligns my (our?) assessment philosophy with my ability to actually report data to students and parents. What does that mean? It means I look like this right now:
Gracias Señor Zemeckis
My current plan is have a private beta running this summer, and then to open a semi-public beta in the fall. Those of you who are on the summer list, expect a carrier pigeon with some login information in a week or so. Also, I will have to cap the fall participants because I will be hosting all of the data; I’ll let you know about the sign-up process in August. Eek!
Here’s a current features list:
- Grades are organized by concept (Standard) rather than by assessment.
- Assessments of students are independent of other students (one student may have 15 assessments, and another may have only 1 of the same standard)
- Grades can be calculated by most recent score, average (boo), mode, or custom-defined rules.
- Totally platform independent web technology (HTML5, AJAX, and PHP), unless you’re using Internet Explorer 6, in which case you’ll just be redirected to download Chrome.
- Grades are stored in the non-proprietary SQL format (Can I get an Amen?)
- Can you say “dynamic graphs of student scores on standard specific assessments over time?”
- Much more that I don’t want to commit to before the beta, but oh man I’m pumped.
What I want from all of you is input. I want this thing to be built by robots teachers for enslaving mankind teachers. I want the final product to be so beautiful that only a crying bald eagle towing Old Glory over a field of wheat will be more touching. Do you understand?! Leave feature requests in the comments, please.
Mandelbrot Redux: Day 2 WCYDWT: Old School – The Movie
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47 thoughts on “The Standards-Based Gradebook – Beta”
[...] problem; this new system will not solve it. The whole project would be frankly impossible without SBG Gradebook, so bottom-of-my-heart thanks to Shawn Cornally and anyone else [...]
Can I be on the beta list?? Thanks! Sounds great!
What are people using for formative assessment questions? I’ll admit, I haven’t used a new version of Examview, so I’m not sure what they are producing.
Are we looking at the Common Core National Standards vs our local State Standards? I don’t want to redo work yet again.
@examview comments
I use it as my question bank and to actually make and print out tests. I have had no problems with getting space or making the layout the way I want. I am a heavy user of tables to create spacing. Say I have a question where I want some extra space below it. I create xx number of line breaks (press enter xx times) then just type a random letter or word. Highlight that letter or word and change the font color to white. You have now given a certain question extra space. There is a page layout preference where you can say for all questions leave this much space between them but yeah, it only allows so much and not every question do you need the exact same space. Love exam view for the easy to use question banks and the way to make dynamic questions as mentioned in the cox blog linked up above.
[...] checklists. [Note to self: need to see what’s on those checklists, will come in handy for my new SBG gradebook.] For about three point seven seconds I wonder whether this would be a problem. Could I do SBG [...]
I would love to see & try this out. I have adapted EGP to do this sort of thing in the past, but am excited to see what you come up with.
Thanks. :)
I need to learn more about SBG before I have a worthwhile suggestion. I have been using percentages rather than points. Will either work?
If you have started your beta list, please include me.
I just read this post. It’s been a little bit since I’ve gotten time to look through old posts on my reader. I’d like to be on the list if you’re still adding people to your beta list. I started doing SBG this past year and it was absolutely great. One of the things that made this past year better than any other.
For those not able to test out Shawn’s SBG gradebook. I think the best I’ve seen so far is brainhoney.com you might want to play with that for a while.
I am planning to upgrade from paper grade book to a spreadsheet this year — but I’d much rather be a beta tester for this sbg grade book. I’m working to adjust my courses to be sbg this summer, and would love additional tools.
@Rachel: Welcome! There’s a pile of information linked on the SBG link at the top of the page, if you’re looking to get into this. I would also check out MeTA musings and dy/dan (see blog roll) for more implementation ideas.
I teach 9-12, so I’d be lying if I said I knew anything about middle and elementary kids. I can tell you that elementary is where this idea started, and where it seems to be the clearest way to communicate. Check out Jason Buell at http://alwaysformative.blogspot.com/ for some middle school ideas.
=shawn
No specific suggestions, but I would love to be on the beta list if possible. I have been reading your blog and am interested in trying SBG.
@Theron Hmmm… In my current gradebook app I’m used to seeing the kids down the side and the assignments across the top…
@All: Thank you all for the awesome ideas! The summer very limited summer beta has started, and I’ll be incorporating as many of the features you all have listed by August. I will announce more information as August approaches, but my goal is for us all to by trying this thing out with real students this fall!
=shawn
This may be asking for trouble (and defeating the purpose to boot), but I’m picturing an extra view that is a grid of standards across and assignments/assessments down. This could provide a little extra data on where the kid’s strengths lie (labs and projects vs. written).
I’m happy to take part in the beta if you’d like some extra data and input.
A front page that shows what students are still below passing on what standards.
How many tries each student has had for each standard. Especially, if they haven’t passed yet.
Notes section.
Hi Shawn, I’d LOVE to be included in the Beta for this summer (and fall??). Thanx for your great posts!
I have been trying to develop a SBG in excel (not having the Godly coding skills of Mr. C) for the past couple of weeks. It poses many challenges, especially here in the UK, as all grades need to end up as national curriculum levels in the end. Good luck with this, will be fascinating to see it develop.
The Teaching Cipher
Wow… I have been a slightly quiet follower of all the SBG blogs I can find and have switched recently. I found that keeping grades in a paper gradebook that where I can keep track of each student and how often has been helpful and then I can put what I want into the online gradebook required by my district. I have also created my own excel gradebook, but it didn’t work the way I wanted. I would love to be a beta tester at any time summer or school year. Thank you for the consideration!
I am also looking forward to the transformation to SBG in my classes in the fall. I would be happy to beta test as well!
I’m converting to SBG next year and would be happy to beta test!
In the meantime, I really want students to “own” their grades, especially since SBG will be new to them. To that end, I plan to create a Google Docs spreadsheet template they can use to enter quiz scores and track their own progress. CalcDave’s suggestion about color-coding scores (conditional formatting) is a good one.
As far as ExamView goes, I have more or less abandoned it due to the layout/spacing issues already mentioned. This year I relied heavily on the Infinite Pre-Algebra and Infinite Algebra 1 worksheet generating programs from Kuta Software…they’ll be great for re-assessments next year when I switch to SBG.
Yes, I’ve been using it as a question bank this year, which is ok. However, my students (and I, for that matter) don’t like how the questions/tests look when printed from ExamView, so I’ve been copying the questions by hand onto a test template. One of the biggest problems is that, as far as I can tell, there’s a limit to how much room you can give students to work on each problem :(
@Meg – I don’t use Examview for “tests”, but instead as a pool of questions to choose from when students are re-assessing. Find a question on 30-60-90 triangles and another on pythagorean’s theorem, print it out and hand it to the student. Does that make sense?
I use ExamView, but I’m having trouble with it because I don’t have enough flexibility in test layout. Any thoughts?
@John – I started using ExamView more and more towards the end of the year to quickly create re-assessments. Check out David Cox’s posts on using it in his classroom, too: http://coxmath.blogspot.com/2010/02/ok-i-really-really-like-it.html
This is a great idea, because it’s both a real support in terms of time, and gives a concrete medium for discussions of the standards and assessments.
Does anyone out there using SBG also use Examview?
Maybe this one is obvious, but thought I’d put it out there: color-coding above/below some threshold of “passing.” Like if on a scale of 0 to 5, color the background (or just the number) red if it’s below a 3 and green if it’s a 4 or 5.
Or maybe just being able to sort standards by some threshold of pass/no-pass to quickly see what a student needs to reassess.
BTW, just in case I haven’t mentioned, I’m very excited about an SBG gradebook! I’m looking forward to something that can record historical data and show development over time, while still giving me flexibility on how I want to calculate their grade based on the raw data of their scores.
@All: Holy woodwork, Batman! Thank you all so much for the comments! I would never have thought of some of those things. The summer beta invites go out in the middle of next week, and it will not be full featured by any stretch of the imagination. I hope you’re all not disappointed… Please, if you think of anything else, drop it in these comments; I really appreciate it.
Keep your email boxes clear for the quasi-public beat in August!
=shawn
If you’ve got any room, I’d like to be on your beta testing list too! (I have beta tested before and am willing to write up detailed reports on any bugs I can find) Summer is a better time to be playing with this kind of thing, since I won’t actually have mission critical info (aka grades) to keep track of, but if you’ve only got space this fall, I’m still very interested :)
Like others have mentioned, in my district I need to have online grades as well. I’m currently using Gradekeeper. It outputs an html page for each student, giving it a unique title xyzzy.html where xyzzy is a number string computed using a combination of the student’s full name and student ID number. It also generates a main webpage that has a form asking for both the student’s name and ID, which uses javascript to recalculate xyzzy and redirect them to the appropriate grade report.
An option to go halfway – Maybe some/most of my gradebook is SBG, but I still have quarter of my grades filled by homework, or some other by-assessment (not by-standard) organization system.
Also, hierarchies of standards?
I would love to be part of your beta group. I have been kicking around an access grading book. What program are you using,and if I know it, I offer my help in debugging, if need.
A report searched on standard for students who have not meet yet is important for me.
I second Townsley and Josh G… export/import for PowerSchool would be amazing! Pretty please… (though I suppose it would only benefit those people who are on “The List”)
Feature request:
Save a history of all attempts at mastery for a certain standard, but only show me the “current” score. And let me choose whether the “current” is the highest or the latest. Allow me to “See all attempts…” if I want to.
Export (maybe import?) to a standard format, even if it’s slightly clumsy. (eg. spreadsheet, or even csv)
ie. Something that lets me use this program but export it into a format for whatever my school is publishing grades with.
For the masses to jump on board, I think we’ll need (we, because Shawn and I are in the same district :), a seamless way to export scores so that they can be imported to PowerSchool (or JMC, Infinite Campus, etc.). With that in mind, will parents be able to see the multiple attempts, too? Will we need to create new logins for students/parents? (I know…features probably beyond beta).
This sounds amazing! I’ve been considering how my grading system affects my students’ motivation to write/revise and researching SBG. I would love to try this out.
Shawn,
Is there going to be any setting for a public or semi-public viewing for students to check on their grades? And to go with that, maybe some sort of anonymous show id-number(or other assigned number) instead of name?
It would be nice to be able to select which topics to view (where here I mean a ‘topic’ as consisting of a collection of interrelated standards). Also, a teacher and student view where the student view has some sort of security feature that would satisfy the federal FERPA law. By the way, I’m teaching this summer so if you’d like your sample to include a university professor… ;-)
2 more things.
Dead simple way of taking formative assessment in class with minimal clicks. A web app ( mobile web formated) for iphone / android webkit browser.
a “view” for teachers to see how a specific Standard is doing across a class, or all classes. Ability to attach documents to assignments. Ability for a student/ parent to login and see how the student is doing in a Standard. As a history teacher I need a history of the comment/ feedback I give on assignment that a student re-edits to obtain a proficiency in a Standard.
Grades calculated by the Power Law Formula as suggested in Marzano’s Transforming Classroom Grading on SBG? I haven’t used it, but it’s his answer to avoiding basing grades on averages.
A place for “comments/notes” to be added to each score?
This sounds fantastic. Here’s one more idea: how about a standard-based problem library. Ideally, it would be a database where you could enter questions for each standard (with LaTeX, would be awesome), and then the user could create custom assessments that draw from this library. Even more bonus points if there were a way to allow a kid to see which questions from the library he/she has completed, perfomance on those questions, and then possibly reassess on new questions.
I’d love to take a look at this!
oh yeah… I also have a dept. meeting tomorrow, at which I’ll be proselytizing the merits of SBG!
Since you’ve convinced me to abandon all in favor of SBG this fall, can I be on the beta list? :)