Role of External Coordinators
External Coordinators have a special role in e-asTTle. They can gain access to multiple schools and aggregate and report data across these schools. They may or may not be staff members.
External Coordinator roles
External Coordinator roles are Professional Learning Development (PLD) Providers, Cluster Coordinators, Researchers, and Temporary External Coordinators.
PLD Providers
Access to e-asTTle data may help a PLD provider develop effective teaching and learning programmes.
Reasons a provider might view e-asTTle data are:
- to prepare themselves for workshops
- to view student reports
- to track progress
- to carry out various other activities within the school they are contracted to.
Cluster Coordinators
Schools may belong to a cluster as part of a Ministry initiative or professional learning community.
A cluster coordinator must track and report on cluster progress. They may wish to create a collection of common tests for groups across cluster schools and report across the cluster.
Researchers
A researcher appointed by the Ministry or a university, may wish to collect specific data or monitor general progress or achievement for a specific purpose. Researchers may need to create collections of common tests or track and report on student progress across multiple schools.
Temporary External Coordinators
There are circumstances where it may be useful to gain temporary access to data from multiple schools. For example, a Year 9 Dean may wish to create an entry test for year 8 students to sit before they enter high school the following year.
A temporary External Coordinator who has another e-asTTle login (for example, as a teacher) must make arrangements to disable the other login while your External Coordinators role is active.
As an External Coordinator (EC), you have the same level of e-asTTle access as teachers. In addition, you can use e-asTTle across multiple schools.
For example, you can:
- create and maintain groups of students across multiple schools
- copy existing an test in one school and assign it to students in another school
- assign tests and view reports for common tests across multiple schools
- aggregate results for tests across multiple schools.
You can also collaborate with other ECs if you have at least one school in common. Doing so allows you to:
- view other EC tests
- assign tests created by another EC to the groups within schools you have access to
- copy and create similar tests to another EC
- mark tests created by another EC
- view reports for tests created by another EC.
Scenarios for different External Coordinator roles
PLD provider as External Coordinator
Scenario 1
The assessment provider has been contracted to work with teachers in creating effective tests and interpreting reports. Teachers have created, assigned and marked tests before an assessment workshop.
The assessment provider as an external coordinator can view the tests before the workshop and prepare supporting materials, including a set of reports to interpret.
If teachers have specific questions or need support outside of the workshop, the External Coordinator can log in to the school’s e-asTTle data to view and analyse information for teachers.
Scenario 2
You are working in a school with a small group of Year 5 students to support literacy. You want to monitor the group’s progress against the other students in the class.
Create a new group for these students, for example, Y5_Litsupport.
You can create tests for this group yourself, or find tests that this group has sat.
To find tests taken by the group, use "Select Groups" on the View Reports page. Filter down to the specific students, and then use the Group filters.
Console Reports – help you find out how your students are doing compared to others of the same year level who are sitting e-asTTle tests
You have two options when generating Console reports to compare performance.
- Generate a Console report for the Y5_Litsupport group and a separate Console report for the class, using the comparative scale. The reports can then be compared side-by-side.
- Create a Console report using x-axis Year, Student Groups. This will generate a report with separate box and whiskers for each of the groups the students belong to.
Cluster Coordinator as External Coordinator
Scenario 3
A project coordinator for a cluster of three schools wants to monitor student achievement in Year 4 in reading over three years, at a school level, and a cluster level.
Schools A, B, and C create a group within their school of all year 4 students.
- School A – Group name: A_Year4_2012
- School B – Group name: B_Year4_2012
- School C – Group name: C_Year4_2012
The project coordinator as an external coordinator creates a Between School Group Year4_2012 which is a group where the three groups above are members.
The external coordinator creates a common test – or ideally, a collection of common tests, for example, Level3/4_Rdg_March2012_EC – and assigns it to the Between School Group. After this test has been sat and marked, the External Coordinator can view reports.
Guidelines for creating effective Custom and Adaptive Tests – provides steps to guide your test creation.
Viewing performance
Viewing cluster performance
To view cluster performance:
Select Test -> View reports -> ALL -> Console -> x-axis = Year
One box-and-whisker graph will display with cluster performance. This process can be repeated at the end of the year – so then both tests can be selected and cluster progress reported.
View performance by school
To view performance by school:
Select Test -> View Reports -> School = My Groups -> Group = Year4_2012 -> Console -> x-axis = Year, Student Groups.
Three box-and-whisker graphs will display - A_Year4_2012, B_Year4_2012 and C_Year4_2012.
Conditions for viewing performance by school
Schools will be able to view reports for their students for only this test – that is, they will not be able to view reports from other schools.
Between School groups must be created to report across schools. Only external coordinators have access to this functionality.
Tests created by ECs "belong" to the EC. This means that when your permission to a school has been removed, the school will no longer be able to see, assign, or mark any tests that were created by you. The school, will, however, still be able to access Progress and ILP reports via the Student Result Summary for any tests that you created.
Once all of the tests have been sat and scored, you can access the Tabular Reports for these tests, export them, aggregate them, and create reports as desired.
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