In this article, you will learn how to create assessments in Insights for courses without a course shell in Canvas.
In many instances in higher education, we need to collect data from areas of our institution that may not have Canvas Course Shells, we want data collected from Practicum/Clinical/Student Teaching mentor teachers, or there are areas of non-academic instruction that want to input data.
Part 1: Creating an “External Context”
Before adding the external assessment, you will need to go to Setup > Organizational Structure to add an External Context to a Course Group (as part of a Program in a particular department.
Once you are in the Organizational Structure Page, follow these steps to add an External Context to a department:
Find the department that needs to house an External Context.
Click on the Program Award, which will show the course groups. Click on the pencil to edit a Course Group.
This will bring up a modal window to edit that course group for that award.
Search for your Department and then click on FIND COURSES. Courses in this department that have Canvas Shells will show up in a list under Select Course(s)
Follow the steps below to add the external context to the selected course group:
a. You will be clicking the blue lettering “Add External Assessment Context.”
b. Create Context for: Use the dropdown box to identify the department that will house this context.
c. Name: Give the context a Name, “Practicum”, “Student Teaching”, “Clinical”
d. Code: Give the context a code: ENG-EXT1 or ACCT-EXT1, etc.
Click Add Context and make sure the external context created is pulled into the course group. SAVE.
Once the context is created, you can go to the mappings tab to confirm that this external context is mapped to PLOs and ILOs as needed within the program with which it's associated. For more details on how to map to the PLOs, see the article "How do I Curriculum Map in Insights?"
Part 2: For the SLO Coordinator — How to Send an External Assessment in Insights
External Assessments allow you to collect important data from faculty or other assessors outside of traditional coursework, helping your institution strengthen data collection and continuous improvement efforts.
Creating a Course-Embedded Assessment Plan
PREREQUISITE: Course-embedded assessments must be connected to a Cycle—so a prerequisite to creating an Assessment Plan is to ensure a Cycle has been created in Insights before proceeding with the creation of a plan.
See article: How do I create Cycles and Goals for Assessment Plan creation?
To create a course-embedded assessment plan in Insights, go to Plan and select
+ Create Assessment Plan. (If there are existing Assessment Plans in progress, they will be listed on screen.)
On the Plan Assessments page, click the dropdown in the Cycle field to select a cycle for this assessment plan (reminder: cycles are created in Setup > Assessment > Cycles & Goals--article link referenced above).
NOTE: Only cycles that are not yet associated with an assessment plan will be listed in the Cycle dropdown.
To create an additional assessment within a cycle where an assessment plan already exists, locate the planned assessment from the list on screen and click the pencil icon to Edit. Then locate the section where you want to add the assessment and click + Add Measure. Select External Assessment from the drop-down menu and click Build.
Once you have selected the assessment Cycle, you can choose to include a mission statement and to include the Goal & Objectives from the Cycles & Goals. This is also the opportunity to add an Approver (Someone who will sign off on the plan) and Reviewers (Someone who will add information in the Section Findings and Section Recommendations for the plan).
Now you can you can create a new section to your plan. You will need at least one section for your Assessment Plan. To add a section, begin by clicking on + Add Section.
Fill in the details for the section and click + Add Measure.
Locate the section where you want to add the assessment and click + Add Measure. Select External Assessment from the drop-down menu and click Build.
This will bring up the Modal Window Add External Assessment.
Enter the details into each of the fields to set up the assessment:
- Assignment Description: Enter a Description of the assessment which will be seen by the faculty assigned to assess.
- Department: Select the department from the dropdown box.
- Context: Select the context created in Part 1 of this article.
- Collect results for: Chose whether you would like to collect results for a Program Assessment or an Institutional Assessment.
- Program: Select the program the assessment is associated with.
- Lerning Outcome Type: Choose the type of learning outcome you will be measuring.
- Learning Outcome Variety, Category, Learning Outcome: Select the Learning Ourcome Varitey (Outcome or Standard) to pouplate the possible categories available. Finally, chose the Learning Outcome(s) from the drop down list.
- Goals and Objectives: Choose from the goals associated with the cycle. You can also select any objective (this is optional).
9. Academic Years and Assessing Terms: Select the years for this juried assessment. (Multiple terms may be selected if you would like to juried assess at different times to track progress towards a goal. The artifacts assessed in a given Juried Assessment are collected prior to the current Juried Assessment term, and, in the case of previous Juried Assessment terms, after and inclusive of the previous term.) *NOTE: Assessing term should be the term that follows the collection term.
10. Select Mastery Rating Scales: select the rating scale that should align to this assessment. Once selected, it will display below. You have the option of editing the rubric criteria for the ILOs or PLOs that will be juried assessed.
11. Assessors: Enter the email address of your first assessor, then click + Add, to display an additional field to continue adding email addresses of additional assessors.*
- This criteria change will apply to all other Insights assessments of that Learning Outcome moving forward (in Canvas or in Juried Assessment).
- We currently only support Juried Assessment of ILOs and PLOs.
*Upload Assessors: this is a link to upload a CSV file of multiple assessors' email addresses. When clicked, be sure to download the excel template and then upload your CSV file with the email addresses.
12. Rubric: View the assessment rubiric to be used for the assessment.
Click the Blue Button that says Update Plan. Once the assessment is set up, you are brought back to the Plan Page.
Click the EDIT button next to your plan. Scroll to find your external measure and click on “Manage External Assessment.”
Clicking where it says “Send out External Assessment”. This will share the link to the rubric to the assessors we identified in the build. Be sure your external context assessor has the Canvas ID and name of the student they are assessing so they can add it to their roster.
The Users identified ass Assessors will receive an email with a link to the external assessment page where they will be able to score the assessment (See below)
Monitor Responses
Return to Insights to track submissions and view results as they come in on the Dashboard page on your blue navigation panel.