Saturday, September 30, 2017

RAPID administration - things I am learning

These administration suggestion were made by teachers:
  • allowing teachers to reset only one section if they felt that a student hadn't done their best, 
  • increasing the font size, and 
  • including guidance that older students may need more than one session for the
    reading comprehension passages.  
Some technical issues that have been reported:
I wanted to let you know that today, while we were administering RAPID to a group of 5th graders, the screen locked up for 3 kids at the same time on the same question. It was a drop down menu. After refreshing the screen, logging out and logging back in, it still would not allow the student to advance to the next question. Any suggestions? 
A possible cause as per Lexia technical support has to do with whitelisting.  Here's a complete whitelisting document.  We've had reports of programs freezing halfway through if some of the content is not fully whitelisted.
NOTE: this is still being investigated as the client does not think this is the issue (9/30/2017)

Another question:

In the first grade, the teachers were wondering about the following results as indicated by the screenshot.  In particular, the student only got 2 questions right and the Lexile level seems to indicate above grade level.  

In addition, she said that per the administration instructions, she gave--pronounced--the words that the student stumbled on and could not be read independently.  The teacher wondered if this would skew this student's results.  

Answers to more administrative questions that were raised:
  • We were unsure about the different font sizes for different passages.
    The reading passages for different students (3rd graders) were in different font sizes. Some of our low readers had passages that were in a very small font. It was extra challenging for them. We didn't want to interrupt them while they were taking the test to see if we could adjust it in any way.
    I checked with the RAPID assessment team and the RAPID program.  They said the difference in font size would not be a based on the functionality of RAPID.  They thought it could have something to do with the browser settings and suggested that you may want to zoom in or out using the browser settings.
  • Can kids adjust We wanted to know if we could divide the test into sections? If so, do we just X out? Many of our lower Grade 3 readers could not remain focused throughout the entire test. It would be great to be able to do the entire reading comprehension part on a different day, when students are fresh. Is this permitted?
    Response from the Lexia RAPID Assessment team. It sounds like they're asking about spacing out the administration of the tasks. This is definitely okay! Students can complete the Reading Comprehension task on a different day, as long as it's within 30 days of their "first click" (when they first started the test). The order of the tasks cannot be changed, but how spaced out they are administered is up to the teacher.
  • If kids do not perform as expected because they were having a bad day, or feel sick, can we retest? Response from the RAPID Assessment Team.  If a student performs worse than expected, we recommend that they re-administer the test in 8 weeks. This allows educators to collect another data point, as opposed to deleting data and potentially getting the same results. In general, a score should only be reset if there are concerns around validity: a student logging in under another name; technology issues getting in the way of testing; etc.

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