Online Assessments

Introduction

In this episode, we explain how OAs are created and initiated. The input required at this stage comes directly from your OA Strategy and its key phases.

Strategy

Your strategy definition phase should provide the input you need to create online assessments. At this stage, you should have configured modules, user accounts, questionnaires and customised fields to record your results.

The table below shows a typical OA strategy:

We recommend you create one dummy OA per strategy item (row on the table above) to fully test:

• The formatting of your questionnaire in the OA Portal
• Tracking results of OA
• Tracking the associated modules tracking of feedback

Phases & Status

When using OA you will notice there are multiple labels (status in eramba) on the first column of your filters.

Status comes with eramba but you can always re-configure them and even add your statuses, they provide powerful automation functionalities when combined with notifications, filters and REST APIs.

The diagram below shows the phases of every OA and the associated status you will see (by default) in eramba. For every OA you have the following phases:

• Created: when you create and save an OA
• Started: when the OA starts on its own (based on the "Start Date" or because you override it and "Started" it)
• Receiving Feedback: while the OA is active and you receive feedback from the OA recipient
• Submitted: when the OA Recipient submits the OA
• Review Feedback: when you go through the feedback and lock answers as you review them, at this stage you will most likely record the OA result on the OA custom fields you created earlier on during the implementation.

The statuses shown on every phase help you understand on which phase your OAs are in. These phases and statuses can be adjusted to suit your needs using custom fields and statuses.

Creating OA

To create OAs you can use the Actions / Add feature or if you plan on uploading multiple OAs at the same time, then we recommend using CSV Imports. 

Start/Stop

An OA can be available for feedback (Start) or disabled (Stop) where no one except the Assessor can access the OA to review feedback. OAs will automatically start and stop based on the dates you defined when you created it, you can override these phases anytime by simply clicking on the item menu using "Start" and "Stop" options.

OA URL

All OAs can be accessed using the default portal URL shown on the menu bar as shown in the screenshot below. Remember that this link will require the user to authenticate, then eramba will check if that user has "Started" OAs assigned and only then will be allowed to access.

The exception to that URL is using non-authenticated OAs, in that case, the URL will be unique to the OA and will be displayed on the OA menu item.