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Glossary of Otus Terms and Definitions
Glossary of Otus Terms and Definitions

This article contains an alphabetical glossary with the terms Otus uses throughout the platform.

Monica Burke avatar
Written by Monica Burke
Updated over a week ago

How to Use this Glossary

This list is in the following format:

  • Term (Module): Definition

First listed will be the term, followed by the Otus module that term is used in, and then the definition. In addition, each term is linked to at least one related article.

Example:

  • Co-Teacher (Classes) - A co-teacher is a user that is added as an additional teacher to a class. Co-teachers are added from the Class Info page.

Some terms live in more than one module, in which case, they will have more than one definition. Some terms don't necessarily have a particular module; these terms are indicated with the word (General) in place of the module.

💡 Tip: To search for a specific word, press Command+F (Mac) or Control+F (PC) on your keyboard and type in the word you are looking for!


Glossary

A

  • Academic Sessions (Control Center): These refer to school years. Examples include 2019-2020 or 2020-2021. To see time frames similar to quarter, semesters, or trimesters, see Grading Periods.

  • Account Type: Admin (General): Admin accounts have the same capabilities as teacher accounts, but also have additional administrative capabilities.

  • Account Type: Family (General): Family members of students can create Otus accounts for free. They can then link their family account to a student account.

  • Account Type: Main Admin (General): This is the account that controls district-wide account settings. It is created during the onboarding process with your Technology Coach. This account includes administrative capabilities that are not accessible in other account types.

  • Account Type: Student (General): This is the account type associated with users of a district that are rostered as students during the onboarding process.

  • Account Type: Teacher (General): This is the account type associated with users of a district that are rostered as teachers during the onboarding process.

  • Activities (Lessons): Components of a lesson that are in the form of activity tiles. Students engage with each activity tile, which they mark complete when they are finished.

  • Admin Users (Control Center): A list of Admin Users can be found in the Control Center in the Main Admin account. This is also where the Main Admin can adjust permissions of Admin Users. A district can have any number of users with admin permissions. Once given admin permissions, a user's account becomes an Admin account.

  • Advanced Assessment (Assessments): An assessment type that has over 60 question formats, including multiple choice, drag and drop, fill in the blanks, and many more.

  • Allow Comments (Blog): The Blog allows you and your students to leave comments on blog posts. Commenting can also be disabled.

  • Allow Post Grading Review (Assessments): This allows the student to re-enter the assessment to see the results once it has been graded. This setting is determined when an assessment is assigned and can be changed thereafter.

  • Analytics Module: Our Analytics module is a great place to view Assessment, Attendance, Standards, Recognitions, and Participation data through date ranges and other filters. You can also create student groups from analytics to make that data actionable.

  • Archived Classes (General): These are classes that have been removed from your class list. Different from deleting, archived classes can be restored if needed. Student data is not removed and will repopulate once the class is unarchived.

  • Assessment (Assessments): Anything that gathers student data is considered an Assessment. Otus has four types of assessments: Advanced, Simple, Rubric, and Plus.

  • Assessment Analytics (Analytics): Assessment Analytics shows detailed assessment performance, such as average scores, performance breakdown by question, and the option to download a printable report.

  • Assessment Analytics 2.0 (Analytics): Assessment Analytics provides a detailed view of overall class completion, an assessment summary, performance breakdown, individual student performance, and improved item analysis.

  • Assessment Builder (Assessments): The assessment builder is the tool you use to create a rubric, advanced, simple, or bubble sheet assessment. Each type of assessment has a different assessment builder user interface.

  • Assessment Details (Assessments): Assessment details are the name, type, grading scale, and category of your assessment draft. Name and category can be edited, but the type and grading scale are locked.

  • Assessments Gradebook (Gradebook): this gradebook displays data and information for all graded assessments based on the grading period in view.

  • Assessments Module: The Assessments Module is where you can build, edit, assign, and grade assessments.

  • Assign an Assessment (Assessments): Assigning is the process of making an assessment available to students. You can assign an assessment draft to classes, groups, or individual students.

  • Assign a Lesson (Lessons): Assigning is the process of making a lesson available to students. You can assign both a lesson draft to classes, groups, or individual students.

  • Attachments (General): Attachments are any files, images, or videos that you upload to be included in an Otus feature. Features that allow attachments include blog posts, rubric assessments, advanced assessments (File Upload), class board posts, the student profile, and mailbox messages.

  • Attempt (Gradebook): An attempt is a student's full attempt at taking and submitting an assessment. Assessments can allow multiple attempts, which would let a student begin the completed and graded assessment again with a blank slate, overwriting their previous attempt and grades.

  • Attendance (Control Center): Attendance data can be uploaded via the Main Admin account. This information can then be used in Analytics, Reports in the student profile, and on Report Cards

  • Attendance Report (Analytics): Attendance Report is a sub-module of the Analytics module that allows teachers and admins to run a report on attendance within a time frame using the analytics filters.

  • Availability (Assessments): Availability is an assigned assessment setting that allows you to make assigned assessments inaccessible to students outside of a specified time window.

B

  • Blog Module: The Blog allows teachers to have informal and conversational-style communication. It can be used for both whole-class communication and private communication.

  • Bookshelf Module: The Bookshelf is a place for teachers and students to upload and share resources of various formats.

C

  • Chat (General): Teacher, Admin, and Family accounts have access to a chat feature in Otus. Use the chat to contact the Otus support team, view help resources, share suggestions, and more.

  • Class (Classes): Classes are groups of students. They can be created in two ways; by syncing with a district's SIS, or by manual creation.

  • Class Board (Classes): The Class Board is where teachers can post general announcements about each class. For example, when homework or projects that are due, or daily agendas.

  • Class Code (Classes): Each class in Otus is assigned a unique identifier called the class code. This code allows students to join a class.

  • Class Feed (Blog): The Class Feed is located in the Blog Module. This is where all of the blog posts from the students and teachers are located.

  • Class Info (Classes): The Class Info section is where a teacher can edit the class name, subject, grade level, language, and add or remove co-teachers.

  • Class Tile (Classes): Classes are displayed in a student and family user's account as a tile. On this tile, a user can see the class name, subject, and teacher.

  • Classes Module: The Classes Module consists of the following sections: classes, students, class board, mailbox, and class info.

  • Clever (Other): Clever is a 3rd party student rostering solution. Using Clever allows us to easily roster classes in Otus based on information Clever receives from a district's SIS. Students and staff can also use Clever for Single Sign-on.

  • Client Experience Partner (General): When school districts begin to implement Otus across one or multiple buildings, they will be assigned a Technology Coach who is responsible to help set up the school account and will take the lead to deliver training to staff members.

  • Clone an Assessment (Assessment): Cloning an assessment will make an identical copy of that assessment that can be edited without impacting the original.

  • Clone a Lesson (Lessons): Cloning a lesson will make an identical copy of that lesson that can be edited without impacting the original.

  • Co-Teacher (Classes): A co-teacher is a user that is added as an additional teacher to a class. Co-teachers are added from the Class Info page.

  • Cohort (Analytics): A cohort is a defined group of students that have taken the same assessments over the course of one or more school years. Cohorts can be defined and analyzed in Historical Analytics.

  • Control Center Module: The control center is a special module only available in the district's main admin account. It can be used to manage grading scales, co-admin access, academic session dates, custom standards, integration activation, and will allow the admin to upload family contact info and student profile pictures in bulk.

  • Country Code (General): Country calling codes or country dial in codes are telephone number prefixes for reaching telephone subscribers in the networks of the member countries or regions of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). This must be entered in the student profile or family contact info to use the mailbox to send text messages.

  • Criteria (Assessment): In a rubric assessment, each descriptor must have at least two criteria; the levels or scores a student can achieve for each descriptor.

  • Criteria (Analytics): Criteria in Analytics are the filters and assessment criteria you enter when running analytics or queries. This can include students, classes, groups, common teachers, grade level, site, teacher groups, gender, ethnicity, and individual students. When running a query, the user can also specify criteria to return students who scored higher, lower or exactly the specified score.

  • CSV (General): CSV, or comma-separated values, is a file format that can be saved from Excel. This is the file format that Otus will accept when uploading spreadsheets of data.

  • Custom Growth Assessment (Analytics): If your district has data they would like available in 3rd Party Analytics, it can be uploaded as a Custom Growth Assessment. Contact your Otus Technology Coach or Otus Support for more information.

  • Custom Standards (Control Center): If your district uses a set of standards different from the collections of standards available, you can add custom standards.

D

  • Decaying Average (Control Center): This is one of five mastery settings that can be made available to calculate standard scores in the standards gradebook. The visibility of this mastery setting can be set in the Control Center of the Main Admin account. Decaying average is a special formula applied to students' multiple scores on a single standard that puts more weight on the most recent attempts, and incrementally less weight on attempts further in the past.

  • Decaying Average (Gradebook): If made available by your district, this is a mastery setting available in the standards gradebook to calculate standard scores. Decaying average is a special formula applied to students' multiple scores on a single standard that puts more weight on the most recent attempts, and incrementally less weight on attempts further in the past.

  • Default Setting (Control Center): The default setting is the standards gradebook calculation setting that will load when a teacher or admin first loads the standards gradebook. This can be set from the Control Center in the Main Admin account.

  • Delete Assessment (Assessments): Deleting an assessment will permanently delete the assessment from the user's drafts along with any data collected from assigning the assessment. This is a permanent action and cannot be undone.

  • Delete Lesson (Lessons): Deleting a lesson will permanently delete the lesson from the user's drafts along with any student progress collected from that lesson. This is a permanent action and cannot be undone.

  • Delete Class (Classes): Deleted classes, as opposed to archived classes, are permanently removed from Otus along with all grades attached to students in that class. This is a permanent action and cannot be undone.

  • Development Team (General): The development team is our team of software developers and product managers who make Otus. The client success team works closely with them to deliver improvements and fix issues that may arise with the continued use of the product.

  • Descriptor (Assessments): A descriptor is the part of a rubric that describes the part of the work being scored. Each descriptor will receive a unique score for the assessment. For instance, an essay rubric may have a separate descriptor for vocabulary, punctuation, formatting, etc.

  • District Module: The District Module is a module only available to admin accounts, and will allow you to click a district tile to view all teachers in a district. From there, you can either email them or view their class tiles.

  • District Recognitions (Classes): District recognitions are special recognitions created by an admin account or through a sync with SIS groups that are accessible to all teachers.

  • Draft Assessments (Assessments): Draft assessments are all assessments created or shared to a teacher or admin account. Once assigned, a draft will remain in the drafts list to be assigned again if necessary.

  • Draft Lessons (Lessons): Draft lessons are all lessons created or shared to a teacher or admin account. Once assigned, a draft will remain in the drafts list to be assigned again if necessary.

  • Due Date (Assessments): The due date is an assigned assessment setting. Otus will automatically mark a student's turn-in status based on if it was turned in before or after the due date. By changing the due date, a teacher can override the date on which an assessment falls in the gradebook.

  • Due Date (Lessons): The due date is an assigned lesson setting. Since grades aren't given for lessons, the only function of a lesson due date is to provide students with the date on which they should have the lesson.

E

  • Engagement (General): When a new district first adopts Otus, the first stage is called Onboarding, and the second stage is called Engagement. Customers in Engagement will work with the whole client services team to continue their education and improve Otus usage across the district.

F

  • Family Communication Log (Classes): Teachers and Admins can utilize the Family Communication log to document various forms of communication (phone calls, emails, texts, in-person conversations, etc.) with family members in the Family Communication Log.

  • Family Contacts (Classes): Within each student's profile, there is a place to store family contact information.

  • Family Signature Line (Analytics): When generating report cards, Admins have options for a Family Signature Line to appear along the bottom of the report card.

  • Features (Assessments): When creating an advanced assessment item, you have the option to choose between questions and features. Features include portions of a question that do not elicit a student response but may be necessary for students to use when answering the question. For example; passages, multimedia player, ruler, calculator, etc.

  • Folders (Assessments): Assessment folders can help teachers organize assessments. Folders can also be helpful for Admins who are sharing groups of assessments to Teachers.

  • Footer (Analytics): When generating report cards, Admins have options for a Footer section to appear on the report card.

G

  • Gradebook Module: The gradebook module is where teachers, admins, students, and family users can review student performance across graded assessments in either the assessments gradebook or standards gradebook.

  • Grading Periods (Control Center): Grading periods are used to create date ranges within the school year. This allows a district to have the ability to distinguish between quarters, semesters, trimesters, or any other custom time frame within a school year.

  • Grading Periods (Gradebook): The grade book will have options to filter data by the date range set for each grading period, as determined by the Main Admin in the Control Center.

  • Grading Scales (Control Center): Consider grading scales as the different levels a student can achieve on a standard. Grading scales can be created and edited in the Main Admin account.

  • Grading Scales (Gradebook): The standards grade book will have options to filter data by various grading scales, as determined by the Main Admin in the Control Center.

  • Grading Scale Key (Analytics): When generating a report card, Admins have the option to include a Grading Scale Key that will display the description associated with each level of the grading scale on the report card to help students and family members have a better understanding of the standards-based grading scale.

  • Grading Scale Labels (Control Center): When creating a custom standards-based grading scale, the Main Admin must name each level to the grading scale in the field for the label. Below each label is a description. These labels and descriptions will appear on the report card if the grading scale key for this grading scale is selected when generating a report card.

H

  • Highest (Control Center): This is one of five mastery settings that can be made available to calculate standard scores in the standards gradebook. The visibility of this mastery setting can be set in the Control Center of the Main Admin account. This is a mastery setting that will allow teachers to visualize the highest score recorded at a standard during the selected grading period or time frame.

  • Highest (Gradebook): If made available by your district, this is a mastery setting available in the standards gradebook to calculate overall standard scores. It shows the highest score recorded at a standard during the selected grading period or time frame.

  • Historical (Analytics): Historical Analytics is a type of report that Admins can use to compare the performance of cohorts of students on a variety of criteria.

  • Home Module: This is the main landing page for users upon logging into Otus. Teacher, student, and family accounts will have a feed of notifications displayed on the home page.

I

  • In-app Chat (General): Teacher, Admin, and Family accounts have access to a chat feature in Otus. Use the chat to contact the Otus support team, view help resources, share suggestions, and more.

  • Include Score in Final Grade (Assessments): This is a setting available when assigning assessments that use the points grading scale. Turning this option off allows for the students to still see the grade in their gradebook, but it won't be calculated toward their overall final grade

  • iFrame (General): iFrame stands for Inline Frame. It is an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a website. It is a way to embed content from websites and instructional tools, including Nearpod, Kahoot, Desmos, Eduzzle, Duolingo, and more

  • Integrations (Control Center): This is where the Main Admin can add LTI resources for teachers to use. Otus has partnered with Turnitin and other LTI tools, which makes their features available to use within the Otus platform.

  • Item Bank (Assessments): When building advanced assessments, teachers may have options to build items or choose pre-built items from the Navigate Item Bank. Access to the item bank is determined by your school's Otus subscription.

J

None

K

None

L

  • Learnosity (Assessments): Learnosity is an Otus integration partner whose platform is utilized when building advanced assessments.

  • Lesson (Lessons): A lesson is a series of instructional activities that teachers can construct for students to access in a certain order or all at once to support self-guided learning.

  • Lessons Module: The Lessons Module is where you can build, edit, and assign lessons.

  • Link Student (General): Upon creating a Family account, family members can link their account to their student(s) by entering a code provided by the school to access information about their student(s).

  • Lockdown Browser (Assessments): When a teacher assigns an assessment, they have the option to turn on a setting to force students to access the test in a Lockdown Browser, which does not allow students to access anything outside of Otus when taking an assessment. The Lockdown Browser is managed by an Otus integration partner, Respondus. Before turning on this setting, students must have the Lockdown Browser installed on their devices to access the assessment.

M

  • Mailbox (Classes): The mailbox is a one-way messaging system that teachers can use to send emails or texts to individuals or groups of students and/or family members.

  • Manage Assignees (Assessments): In the assigned section of the assessments module, teachers can use the manage assignees button to assign or unassign assessments to individuals or groups of students. If you unassign an assessment, any data collected from that assessment will be deleted.

  • Manage Assignees (Lessons): In the assigned section of the lessons module, teachers can use the manage assignees button to assign or unassign lessons to individuals or groups of students. If you unassign a lesson, all student progress on that lesson will be deleted.

  • Manual Rostering (General): This is the process of generating student and teacher accounts and establishing classes for those users by uploading one or multiple spreadsheets as opposed to rostering by syncing from a school's SIS (Student Information System).

  • Mastery Settings (Control Center): When the Main Admin sets up standards-based grading settings in the Control Center, they will have the option to adjust the visibility of mastery settings, which include Highest, Most Recent, Mean, Mode, and Decaying Average. Each visible mastery setting will be accessible to users in the standards grade book and standards analytics.

  • Mastery Settings (Gradebook): The mastery setting selected from the filter in the standards gradebook will dictate how the overall standard grades are being calculated.

  • Matrix Values (Analytics): When using Query, users can add multiple criteria to identify students for programs and services. Matrix Values allow you to assign weight to these criteria.

  • Mean (Control Center): This is one of five mastery settings that can be made available to calculate standard scores in the standards gradebook. The visibility of this mastery setting can be set in the Control Center of the Main Admin account. The mean is an average of all attempts on a single standard within the selected grading period.

  • Mean (Gradebook): If made available by your district, this is a mastery setting available in the standards gradebook to calculate standard scores. The mean is an average of all attempts on a single standard within the selected grading period.

  • Mode (Control Center): This is one of five mastery settings that can be made available to calculate standard scores in the standards gradebook. The visibility of this mastery setting can be set in the Control Center of the Main Admin account. The mode is the score that occurred the most in a set of attempts on a single standard.

  • Mode (Gradebook): If made available by your district, this is a mastery setting available in the standards gradebook to calculate standard scores. The mode is the score that occurred the most in a set of attempts on a single standard.

  • Most Recent (Control Center): This is one of five mastery settings that can be made available to calculate standard scores in the standards gradebook. The visibility of this mastery setting can be set in the Control Center of the Main Admin account. The most recent score is the score a student got on the most recent attempt at a standard.

  • Most Recent (Gradebook): If made available by your district, this is a mastery setting available in the standards gradebook to calculate standard scores. The most recent score is the score a student got on the most recent attempt at a standard.

  • My Bookshelf (Bookshelf): My Bookshelf is the submodule of the bookshelf that contains all resources and folders created by you. You can share resources from My Bookshelf to other teachers and students to appear in their "Shared With Me" submodule.

  • My Folders (Assessments): My Folders is a submenu on the Assessment Drafts page that contains folders created by the user to organize their assessments.

  • My Posts (Blog): My Posts, the default view for the Blog module, will display a list of all active posts by the user.

N

  • Navigate Item Bank (Assessments): The Navigate Item Bank is a bank of thousands of pre-made items that are aligned to common core and state standards, as well as Bloom's taxonomy. These can be added to an Otus advanced assessment.

  • Notes (Classes): Notes are written entries a teacher or admin can make in the Information tab of a student's profile. The teacher/admin has the option of adding that note to the report card.

  • Notes (Analytics): When generating report cards, there is an option to include the notes as mentioned above so that they are printed on the report cards for each student.

  • Notification Feed (Home): The notification feed is a list of class activity connected to the user's account. For example, a student will receive a notification on their feed when they've been assigned an assessment. It is available in teacher, student, and family accounts.

O

  • Onboarding (General): When a new district first adopts Otus, the first stage is called Onboarding. They will be partnered with a technology coach who will facilitate the initial rollout and rostering of classes in Otus before the district goes into Engagement (the second stage).

P

  • Performance (Gradebook): Performance is a measure of a student's mastery of a particular standard. A performance history for each standard can be viewed on a student by clicking their standard grade in the gradebook.

  • Permissions (Control Center): Permissions are set for Admin users based on site, district group or grade level. These can be set by the Main Admin and Admins will not be able to see students outside their permissions.

  • Plans Module: Otus Plans allows educators to create and monitor different data points in a district-specific, itemized plan. Progress can then be tracked across classes and school years, allowing for a more individualized and flexible approach to learning and growth.

  • Plus Assessment (Assessments): Plus assessments are assessments added directly to the standards or assessments gradebook using the plus sign icon. The Plus (+) Assessment feature allows teachers to quickly enter data for assessments you’ve given outside of Otus (observation, exit, slip, etc.. ) and connect it to standards.

  • Portfolio (Classes): Each student has a portfolio. Items can be added to the portfolio such as assessments, documents, images, and many other file formats. The portfolio can be seen by the teacher, student, and parents.

  • Preview (Assessments): Users can preview draft assessments to see them as a student would. Previewing draft assessments can only be done by the original creator of the assessment. To preview an assessment made by another user, the user needs to send a copy of that assessment.

  • Preview (Lessons): Users can preview draft and assigned lessons to see them as a student would. Previewing draft lessons can only be done by the original creator of the lesson. To preview a lesson made by another user, the user needs to be sent a copy of that lesson.

  • Publish (Blog): Publishing a blog post will place that post on the Class Feed for students to see and comment on (if commenting is allowed).

Q

  • Query 1.0 (Analytics): Query 1.0 is the original version of Query. If you would like to be able to access this version, please contact Otus Support.

  • Query (Analytics): Query is a report that allows you to identify and compare populations of students matching specific criteria across multiple data sources. It is designed for cases in which you have a set of criteria, and you need to know what students meet that criteria.

  • Questions (Assessments): In Advanced Assessments, there are items and questions. Questions are built within the items. Items can have multiple questions.

R

  • Randomize Questions (Assessments): For Simple and Advanced assessments, the order of questions can be randomized. This can be turned on when you assign the assessment.

  • Recognitions (Classes): Recognitions provide a quick way to document student behavior. There are both positive and negative recognitions, and they can be created at the district level and by an individual teacher.

  • Recognitions Report (Analytics): This is a type of report available in the Analytics module. A Recognitions Report will allow you to visualize positive and negative behaviors at the individual student or classroom level.

  • Reports (Analytics): This is a section in the Analytics module that is only available in Main Admin and Admin accounts. There are three types of reports in this section; Query, Historical, and Report Cards.

  • Resource (Bookshelf): An item located on the Bookshelf is referred to as a Resource. These can be in many different formats and can be shared with individual students, groups of students, entire classes, or other teachers. They can also be used in lessons.

  • Rubric Assessment (Assessments): This is an assessment type that consists of descriptors and criteria. This is also the most efficient way to use Google Docs in an assessment.

S

  • Save as Draft (Blog): When creating a blog post, it can either be published immediately, scheduled to publish at a later date, or saved as a draft. Saving as a draft will keep the post in your My Posts section, but will not publish the post until you change the settings otherwise.

  • Scheduled (Blog): When creating a blog post, it can either be published immediately, scheduled to publish at a later date, or saved as a draft. Scheduling to post at a later date allows you to create the post at present, then set it to automatically post on a given date and time.

  • School Logo (Reports): When generating report cards, you have the option of including a School Logo.

  • Send Copy (Assessments): Users can send copies of assessments to other users. A copy of the assessment will be sent to the user and placed in the Shared with Me section of their draft assessments. It will be marked with a paper airplane icon, which can be hovered over to identify the sender. Administrators also have the ability to send locked copies of assessments and folders of assessments.

  • Send Copy (Lessons): Users can send copies of lessons to other users. A copy of the lesson will be sent to the user and placed in their draft lessons. It will be marked with a paper airplane icon, which can be hovered over to identify the sender.

  • Shared with Me (Bookshelf): A resource that has been shared with a user will be placed on that user's Shared With Me Bookshelf.

  • Shared with Me Folder (Assessments): A resource that has been shared with a user that appears in the drafts section of the Assessment module. A paper airplane icon will appear next to any of these Assessments.

  • Sharefile (General): A secure data-sharing platform that your Otus Technology Coach may utilize when sending or receiving sensitive information like student test scores or login credentials.

  • Simple Assessments (Assessments): One of the assessment type options available for teachers to easily create assessments quickly. Simple assessments are limited to three question types; multiple choice, true/false, and short answer.

  • SIS (General): Student Information System: often schools connect their SIS to Otus so that rosters are inherited into the platform and sync on a nightly basis.

  • Site (Home): A school within a school district or organization.

  • Standards (General): Learning targets or performance indicators that can be linked to assessment items or rubrics.

  • Standards Analytics 1.0 (Analytics): Standards Analytics allows a teacher or admin to be able to analyze student performance on a specific standard over a given timeframe, mastery setting, and grading scale. Users can manipulate the filters to disaggregate the data to further analyze student performance.

  • Standards Analytics 2.0 (Analytics): Our new and improved version of Standards Analytics allows a teacher or admin to be able to analyze student performance on a specific standard or a group of standards over a given timeframe, mastery setting, and grading scale. Users can manipulate the filters to disaggregate the data to further analyze student performance.

  • Standards-Based Grading (General): Standards-based grading is a system of assessing and reporting student performance and progress in relation to standards.

  • Standards-Based Grading Scale (General): Depending on your school's account settings, you may be able to create assessments built on one or multiple standards-based scales. Any assessment built using a standards-based scale will require standards to be linked to items and will have data flow into the standards gradebook and standards analytics.

  • Standards Gradebook (Gradebook): Once students have been assessed on items linked to standards, the data will flow into the standards grade book so that teachers can track and calculate student performance for their class.

  • Standards Settings (Control Center): The Main Admin has the ability to adjust which standards are displayed as options to be linked to assessments in the Standards Settings module.

  • Start Date (Assessments): Upon assigning an assessment, teachers can determine when they'd like the assessment to be available in a student account by manipulating the start date.

  • Status: On Time, Missing, Late, Excused, Excluded (Assessments): After grading an assessment, teachers will see one of these statuses next to each student's name in the assessments grade book.

  • Status: Submitted, Graded, Not Started (Assessments): After assigning an assessment, teachers will see one of these statuses next to each student's name in the Assigned Assessments upon clicking on the assessment.

  • Student Groups: District Created (Classes): Admins can create student groups for their school or district. Groups are useful for differentiating assessments, sending resources, or serving as a tool to organize students. Students and family members do not see any groups within their accounts.

  • Student Groups: Teacher Created (Classes): Teachers can create student groups. Groups are useful for differentiating assessments, sending resources, or serving as a tool to organize students. Students and family members do not see any groups within their accounts.

  • Student Profile (Classes): The student profile is a location where Admins and Teachers can see consolidated data, artifacts of student work, and other information about a student that has been tracked in their account.

  • Student Signature Line (Analytics): When generating report cards, Admins have the option for a Student Signature Line to appear along the bottom of the report card.

  • Submission Date (Assessments): When creating a Plus Assessment, submission date is similar to due date - it is a date stamp for when the assessment was entered into the gradebook. You can future or past date if you wish.

  • Sync (General): If your school's account has been rostered through an integration with your Student Information System (SIS), there is a nightly sync scheduled to update rostering information from the Student Information System and to keep the student rosters accurate in Otus.

T

  • Tags (Control Center): The Main Administrator can add tags to standards through the Control Center or with the help of their Otus Technology Coach. Standards tags will allow you to group standards together and may make some tasks like generating report cards easier.

  • Target Sets (Analytics): When 3rd party data is uploaded into the Analytics module of Otus, an Otus Technology Coach or a school administrator may create a set or multiple sets of targets to display benchmarks along with the data. This gives users the ability to see how the student scores compare to the targets that are projected by the 3rd party or the school administration.

  • Teacher Groups (Home): Much like how teachers can organize students into groups, Administrators can create teacher groups to send copies of assessments to large groups of teachers at once or to filter data in analytics by these groups.

  • Texthelp Speechstream (Assessments): This is a tool that a teacher can enable upon assigning an Advanced Assessment that allows students to highlight text and play audio, use a dictionary to define words, and other helpful functions when taking an assessment.

  • ThinCC (Bookshelf): ThinCC, or Thin Common Cartridge, is a way to integrate 3rd party instructional materials into Otus that can be shared with students.

  • Third/3rd Party Analytics (Analytics): Local and state assessments that students take outside of their regular classroom assessments. Examples include NWEA, iReady, PSAT, SBAC, IAR, ACT. Data from these assessments can be uploaded into the Analytics module.

  • Time Limit (Assessments): Upon assigning an assessment, teachers can set a time limit for the assessment. After the time runs out, each student's assessment will be submitted if it hasn't already been submitted by the student.

  • To-Do List (Calendar): The Calendar has two different views; one displays on a calendar-view, while the To-Do List shows all of your upcoming events in a list-view.

  • Turnitin (Assessments): If your school's account has the Turnitin integration enabled, teachers will have the ability to use Turnitin when they assign rubric assessments. When students submit their work, Turnitin will review the writing sample for plagiarism.

  • Turnitin Integration (Control Center): Otus has an integration with Turnitin for any school district that has a Turnitin subscription. When the Main Admin turns on the integration in the Control Center, teachers will be able to use this setting when assigning rubric assessments so that Turnitin can review student writing samples for plagiarism.

  • Type (Assessments): When creating an assessment, teachers must choose an Assessment type (category). This factors in two places; in Type Comparison in Analytics, and if the assessments gradebook for the class factors in grade book weighting.

  • Type Comparison (Analytics): Teachers and Administrators can use this functionality in Assessment Analytics to compare how students perform across different assessment types (assignments, quizzes, tests, etc.)

U

  • Unassign Assessments (Assessments): To remove an assigned assessment from a class, student group, and/or individual students, teachers will need to unassign the assessment. If the assessment has already been graded, unassigning the assessment will remove the grades from the gradebook.

  • Unassign Lessons (Lessons): To remove an assigned lesson from a class, student group, and/or individual students, teachers will need to unassign the lesson. Unassigning the lesson will remove all records of student progress on that lesson.

  • Unlink Student (General): For a family user to be able to have access to their student's account, they must link their account with a code provided by the student's school. Likewise, they can unlink the account if they no longer want to be associated with it.

V

None

W

  • Weighting (Gradebook): In the assessments gradebook, teachers can use weighting to determine the percentile values that each assessment type contributes to the overall grade.

X

None

Y

None

Z

None

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