Assessment Module Help

The assessment module allows system users to easily perform non-indicator based performance assessments that encompass a range of categories on any type of system item or as a stand alone assessment. It will be possible to perform assessments on a regular basis and to report progress in a number of ways.

The initial driver for this module was the UPBEAT project, a university research project headed by the University Of Salford to create a framework for the assessment of the quality of academic outreach both within and between higher education establishments. Additionally, it has been realised that a framework based approach to assessments that do not fall within the usual performance indicator based approach would enable a wide range of additional corporate performance information to be included within the Escendency System, such as:

The base unit of assessment is the ‘project’ which will identify the item being assessed, how it is to be assessed and by whom.

Each project is of a specific ‘type’. This will group related projects (e.g. all UPBEAT assessments would be projects of the UPBEAT type, while all Environmental Impact assessments might be projects of the Environmental Impact type).

The project type identifies which ‘categories’ a project is assessed against. A category defines a checklist of criteria, which is used to assess the level of attainment within a category for a project.

Note: for simpler setup the constituent components of categories and types should be identified before starting setup.

Log in to your control panel. Click on the tool button (top RHS of the page). This will link to a pop-up list of all the existing menu options as well as the assessment module links (figure 1):

Next, click on the Assessment Categories to access the Assessment Category List (figure 2):

Figure 3: Creating an Assessment Category (in this example for a type of assessment that will be called ‘Risk’).

Note: It is recommended that the assessment categories name is prefixed with the assessment type they will constitute. For example, Risk Impact, Employee Assessment - All team building meetings attended, NVQ Level 1 Hospitality – Maintain Customer Care. This will help when selecting the categories from a list to use for the relevant assessment type.

Once fields are filled in click ‘Save’. A drop down list of threshold levels will appear (figure 4):

Enter in threshold levels then click ‘Edit Checklist (the threshold levels will be saved automatically)’. Each threshold level needs a checklist associated with it (figure 5).

Click on the ‘Add Checklist Item’ and fill in the checklist fields as required (figure 6):

After each item is completed click on ‘Add Checklist Item’ until all items are completed (figure 6.2)

Figure 6.2: Assessment Checklist – all checklist items added for the category of Risk: Likelihood.

Note: In this example (Risk management module) there is a one to one relationship of checklist items to categories but there could be any number of checklist items depending on the category (e.g. Human Resources assessments).

Once all the necessary checklist items are added (can add more as needed at any time) then click ‘Save’ and then 'Cancel' to exit.

Create the additional categories needed for the Assessment Type (‘Risk: Impact’ for the example above). There is no limit to the number of categories that can be created for a given assessment type.

Click on the tool button again (unless the tool page is still open) and select the Assessment Types link (figure 7):

o Product – all category levels are multiplied to produce the overall score

o Sum – all category levels are added to produce the overall score (default)

o Change – the difference in level between the baseline level and the current level for each category is summed to produce the overall score

Check the categories relevant to the assessment type.

Note: By careful naming of the categories it’s easy to see how assessment types can be variously split up. In the example above, a category could be created for Environmental Assessment that sums up all the categories beginning ‘Environmental Assessment’ but similarly the assessments could be broken down into ‘Environmental Assessment – Water’ and ‘Environmental Assessment – Waste’ etc

Figure 9: Assessment Type edit window.

Click ‘Save’ to save the changes and then ‘Cancel’ to close the window.

3. Create the Assessment Project

Click on the tool button again (unless the tool page is still open) and select the Assessment link (figure 10):

Figure 10: Selecting Assessment Types from the menu options tab.

Click on the ‘Add’ button to create an Assessment project (figure 11):

Figure 11: Assessment project list.

Fill in the assessment project fields as required (figure 12):

Figure 12: Assessment set up.

Name – Identifies the project and is used in all reports and task lists
Assessment Type – This drop down list includes all of the active assessment types defined. Selecting an assessment type will affect which target score options are shown below.
Start Date – Identifies when the project begins. An initial baseline assessment task will be due on this date (i.e. it will show up on the assessors tasklist).
End Date – Identifies when the project ends (if applicable). The final project assessment will become due on this date.
No End Date – For assessments that do not have a specific end date, checking this box will disable the end date field. Assessments will continue to fall due at the appropriate interval while the project remains active.
Assessment Frequency – Defines the regular interval when full assessment will become due (It will be possible to perform additional assessments in between these intervals, however these would not replace the regular assessments).
Assessor – The identity of the system user who will have main responsibility for assessing the project (this is the user who will receive assessment tasks).
Validator – The identity of the system user who will have responsibility for ensuring that an assessment has been correctly performed. The validator and assessor may not be the same system user.

When the fields above have been filled and ‘Save’ is clicked then the category list will be displayed showing the categories already selected for this assessment type in step 2 (also shown in Figure 12):

Category – This section specifies what level of attainment is desired for each assessment category and how category attainment affects the overall rating. This section contains the following fields for each category:

Level – specifies the desired final level of attainment for the category (constrained within the range defined by the category)
Multiplier – This setting allows different categories within a project to be given different emphasis when calculating the overall attainment score. Each category level will be multiplied by the relevant multiplier before feeding into the score calculation (as defined for the assessment type)
Optional – If this checkbox is specified for a category, users will be able to perform ad-hoc assessments without having to fill in the checklist for the category. All categories checklist will still need to be filled when performing scheduled assessments (those which are due at the assessment interval).

Note: In this example, the risk impact checklist in categories could have been expanded to include all events that have been identified as risks for this particular assessment as well as others.

4. Performing Assessments

Once an assessment project is set up the assessment tasks will appear in the relevant user's task lists. The first task will be to enter baseline information (figure 13).

Figure 13: Baseline Assessment Task

Clicking on the Assessment task will bring up the list of project categories from which the relevant checklist items will be accessed (figure 14).

Figure 14: Category list for an Assessment project.

By clicking on each level in turn the checklist will show up and the appropriate checklist questions can be answered for each level (figure 15).

Figure 15: Project Checklist - the relevant questions are answered for each level in turn.

Once all the categories are checked the assessment is saved. The baseline task will now disappear to be replaced by the first assessment task (figure 16).

Figure 16: Assessment Task - this task will only show after the baseline task is completed.

The procedure for filling in the assessment task is identical to completing the baseline task.

5. Reporting Assessments

Assessments can be reported either on the dashboard by clicking the customise dashboard link (figures 17.1, 17.2, 17.3) or as a summary report list from the reports tab (figure 18). Both reports can be drilled down to their detailed individual reports showing both baseline, current assessment and scores for each category (figure 19).

Figure 17.1: Customise dashboard window. Clicking on the Assessment Projects 'Select' button opens up a list of available projects (figure 17.2).

Figure 17.2: List of available assessment projects. Clicking on 'Save' then 'Save' in the customise dashboard window will bring the graph up into the dashboard (figure 17.3).

Figure 17.3: Example of an assessment project report displayed on the dashboard.

Assessment graphs can also be displayed as a rose diagram (figure 17.4) by selecting the rose diagram option in the customise dashboard window.

Figure 17.4: Two examples of assessment reports displayed on the dashboard as rose diagrams.

Clicking on the assessment graph in the dashboard will drill down to the complete assessment project report including baseline and current assessment (figure 19).

An assessment summary report (figure 18) can be accessed from the Assessment Report option in the report tab and is a list of all available assessment projects listed by type. Clicking on each report in the list will drill down to the detailed assessment report (figure 19).

Figure 18: Example of an Assessment Summary report accessed from the reports tab. Clicking on each report link will open a detailed assessment report (figure 19).

Figure 19: Example of a detailed assessment report showing baseline and current assessment as well as scores for each category. This report is accessed either by clicking on an assessment graph displayed in the dashboard or a report from the list in the Assessment Summary Report

Assessment Module	Help Home Page
	Components of and the Setting up of Assessment projects
	Performing Assessment Tasks and Reporting