A particular pleasure recently has been to observe the increasing trend of early Yacapaca adopters seeking to induct colleagues. It is an extra level of validation when somebody thinks that what you are doing is good enough to share with their friends. And I’m a sucker for flattery.
These pioneering adopters tend to learn by tinkering about. They don’t just not need formal training, they don’t want it. So we don’t didn’t offer it.
Now things have changed. The teachers who are joining Yacapaca on the strength of the recommendation of a colleague are typically more pragmatic people. They want to know how they can do assessment more effectively, using less of their own time, using an online system.
To meet that need, we have set up a series of four one-day eAssessment training events around the country. The aim is to give a strong enough grounding that you can use Yacapaca as a day-to-day assessment tool in any subject. We will cover both the objective (multiple choice etc) and subjective (ePortfolio & short text) sides of the system.
- Birmingham – Friday, July 7th.
- Milton Keynes – Monday, July 10th (run in conjunction with Milton Keynes LEA and focusing on PSHE)
- Swansea/Port Tabot – Friday, July 14th
- Guildford – Tuesday, 18th July
Cost £95.00 including lunch
to book call Chalkface on 0800 781 8858
or email sonia_n@chalkface.com
Day Plan
The day will cover Yacapaca from start to finish:
Day-to-day usage
- Adding students and additional teachers
- Selecting and setting tests
- Analysing results (including advanced analysis)
Authoring your own tests
- Creating different question types (multiple choice, cloze, survey)
- Managing your question bank
- Constructing multiple tests from a single bank
Writing for publication
- Writing stems with clarity
- Options that that facilitate guessing and ‘gaming’, and how to avoid them
- Writing formative feedback that best facilitates learning
ePortfolios and Short-Text resources
- Basic setup of the ePortfolio module
- Setting and monitoring tasks
- Authoring portfolio tasks
- Converting MS Word worksheets into interactive online resources
- Writing ePortfolio resources for publication
The group will be kept small to ensure personal attention to each delegate, so early booking is advisable.
If you are planning to purchase a Yacapaca site license for your school, we can also provide this same training course on-site. Currently we won’t charge for this, but will require you to help us market the event to teachers from other schools near you.
Yacapaca 
8 responses to “eAssessment training days”
Dear all,
I have bought and received quite a few resources from Chalkface and they are very good. I am just wandering if you will be making provision for the new GCE ‘A’ Level in Applied ICT. And I would also like to know if the e-assessment training days will be any good for the aboug course.
Regards
Flor de Maria Thompson
Dear all,
I have bought and received quite a few resources from Chalkface and they are very good. I am just wandering if you will be making provision for the new GCE ‘A’ Level in Applied ICT. And I would also like to know if the e-assessment training days will be any good for the aboug course.
Regards
Flor de Maria Thompson
Yes, we do plan some provision, though we are not creating a full set of materials. You will definitely be able to use our ePortfolio to create the required student portfolios, so that part of the training would be useful. You can also create your own multiple choice and cloze tests for the course, and the training will show you how to do that. Hope to meet you there!
Yes, we do plan some provision, though we are not creating a full set of materials. You will definitely be able to use our ePortfolio to create the required student portfolios, so that part of the training would be useful. You can also create your own multiple choice and cloze tests for the course, and the training will show you how to do that. Hope to meet you there!
Hi there. My question is simple (well to me it is) but are there any ‘GOOD’ provisions for eAssessment for Maths. I mean multiple choice can take you only so far. We need to, as maths teacher, be able to check working out etc. Is this possible without using additional software such as Matlab.?
Also how does your VLE compare with Fronter or Blackboard (even though im not even considering this for my department its way too expensive)?
Thanks for taking the time to read this
Hi there. My question is simple (well to me it is) but are there any ‘GOOD’ provisions for eAssessment for Maths. I mean multiple choice can take you only so far. We need to, as maths teacher, be able to check working out etc. Is this possible without using additional software such as Matlab.?
Also how does your VLE compare with Fronter or Blackboard (even though im not even considering this for my department its way too expensive)?
Thanks for taking the time to read this
Hi Atif, thanks for the questions. Yacapaca is not a VLE! It’s an assessment platform. It does a completely different job from Fronter and Blackboard, IMO a much more useful and relevant one. It’s also free – you pay for content, but not the system.
Actually our baseline assessments for Maths don’t use multiple choice; they use cloze (fill in the gap). You are quite correct that they do not show working, however. The main function of that particular product is to give you a reasonably accurate baseline quickly. Checking working comes later in the process.
A big element of these training days will be learning to use the built-in authoring tools. For the sort of task you are describing, it might be more appropriate to use the ePortfolio rather than the objective (multiple choice, cloze, etc) tools. Yacapaca includes them both. I recommend you sign up for a free trial account on Yacapaca and play with the ePortfolio authoring tools. If you think they could work for you and you want some formal training, we’d love to see you on one of the training days.
Hi Atif, thanks for the questions. Yacapaca is not a VLE! It’s an assessment platform. It does a completely different job from Fronter and Blackboard, IMO a much more useful and relevant one. It’s also free – you pay for content, but not the system.
Actually our baseline assessments for Maths don’t use multiple choice; they use cloze (fill in the gap). You are quite correct that they do not show working, however. The main function of that particular product is to give you a reasonably accurate baseline quickly. Checking working comes later in the process.
A big element of these training days will be learning to use the built-in authoring tools. For the sort of task you are describing, it might be more appropriate to use the ePortfolio rather than the objective (multiple choice, cloze, etc) tools. Yacapaca includes them both. I recommend you sign up for a free trial account on Yacapaca and play with the ePortfolio authoring tools. If you think they could work for you and you want some formal training, we’d love to see you on one of the training days.