Are you using Otus to distribute and assign benchmark or common assessments? This article provides a comprehensive overview of how to prepare, distribute, assign, and analyze the data gathered from benchmark or common assessments.

Important Disclosures

If the instructions below are not followed exactly as written, Otus may not be able to display the data in a way that will be helpful to teachers, instructional leaders, building administrators, or district leaders.
Make sure your devices meet all of the technical requirements and that all necessary URLs have been added to your district's whitelist as mentioned in this article.

Everything we describe here in this article is based on our recommended practice for benchmark and common assessments. In general, here is an outline of the process which will be described in detail within this article.

Look for the "Otus Recommends" icon throughout this article to see the other ways in which we suggest taking action.

Make a Plan

Before diving in, you will want to make sure you talk to your teachers and administrators about how to go about creating and distributing these assessments. Some talking points you may want to consider:

You'll want these assessments to be completed well before your testing window. This will provide you with enough time to account for any unexpected scheduling, technology, or other issues without those issues becoming critical emergencies.

Decide who is going to create the assessments, and which accounts those assessments will be created in. Will it be teachers creating the assessments, or administrators? Will you have them created in individual teacher/administrator accounts, or create a shared administrator account for grade level and/or subject area assessments?

❓ Why create admin accounts specific for assessment building? This allows groups of staff members to access a single account to build assessments. For example, all first grade teachers can login to the 1st Grade Teacher admin account to build assessments. For more information on creating admin accounts, check out this resource.

Decide how these assessments will be distributed to teachers. Will you distribute them individually or in folders? To individual teachers, or to Teacher Groups?

Create the Assessments and Folders in Otus

Once you've decided who will be creating the assessments, and in which accounts they will create them in, it's time to start building the assessments and putting them into folders!

Create the Assessments

For more information on how to create each of our assessment types, check out the resources below.
Not sure which one to use? Check out this article that outlines all three types before you begin.

Create the Folders

A few things to keep in mind while creating assessment folders; assessment folders can be created in any account, but they can only be shared by administrator accounts. Think back to your plan regarding which account is going to be creating the assessments, and how they will be distributed to teachers. For more information on creating assessment folders, check out this resource.

Why Assessment Folders?

When distributing assessments, would you rather distribute them one assessment at a time, or distribute multiple assessments at once? Using Assessment Folders allows you to do the latter. From an administrator account, you can distribute entire folders of assessments to teachers.

Confirm Teacher Groups

In this step, you'll want to review the teachers who are assigned to your teacher groups. This way, when it comes time to send the assessment folders to these teacher groups, all of the intended teachers will receive the folders. For more information, check out this resource.

Why Why Teacher Groups?

From an administrator account, you can easily distribute assessments to multiple teachers based on Teacher Groups.

Distribute Assessments to Teachers

When the assessments are completed, it is now time to distribute them to the teachers that will be assigning the assessments. You will want to distribute these as locked assessments. The example image below shows how to share a folder of locked assessments to a Teacher Group:

For more information, check out this resource on how to share folders of locked assessments.

Why Locked Assessments?

Locked assessments are not able to be edited by anyone other than the original creator. Individual teachers are not able to edit the assessments.
Administrators can review the aggregated data in Analytics (Query Analytics will be especially helpful when using data to identify students for programs).

Administrators can disaggregate the individual locked assessment data by teacher, class, grade level, and other applicable filters.

Teacher Assigns and Grades Assessment

Once the teacher has received the locked assessment(s), they can then assign them to their classes. For more information on assigning assessments, check out this resource.

View Data in Gradebook and Analytics

Once the assessment has been graded, both admin and teachers can view the results in the gradebook and in the analytics module.

Gradebook

The data from each assessment can be viewed in the assessments and standards gradebook.

Assessments View

For more information, check out this resource.

Standards View

For more information, check out this resource.

Analytics

The data from each assessment can be viewed in Assessment Analytics, Standards Analytics, Query*, and Historical*

Assessment Analytics For more information, check out this resource.	Standards Analytics For more information, check out this resource.
Query For more information, check out this resource.	Historical For more information, check out this resource.

Otus Live Video

Click to see a video from our Otus Live series on best practices for common benchmark assessment management.

Send a Copy of an Assessment

Share Assessment Folders

Assign Assessments from an Admin Account

Otus Assessment Library FAQs

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