Welcome to the SCASS Science Web-based Assessment System!

http://sciencescass.org

This guide is intended to provide basic information. Please see the Help section on the website for more information.

After successful login, a list of available collections is displayed:

Two Most-Important Operation Notes:

1. When saving items of interest to your computer, you must use specific browsers if you want to download the associated images to your computer as well. Many browsers will just retain the link to the image on the Internet. See the list of browsers in the Help section for this information.

2. Saved groups of items will need to edited in a word processor before printing to ensure page breaks are as desired. Printing directly from the browser is fine for quick printing, but if you want to ensure a desired formatting, you must first save the items to your computer, and then edit the saved document in a word processor. Use the print preview feature to determine where page breaks are desired. **Be sure to give the files a useful name and remember when you saved it!

You can download items as a test – no answers, and items as a score guide – with answers. For short answer, extended response and performance tasks, score guides usually include rubrics and scored student samples. This can include many images. You may want to view the scoring guide online rather than printing it if it gets too long.

1

How to search:

Browse the collection catalog and select terms for searching:

1. Browse the available descriptors from the pulldown menu. In the screen shot below, the Item Type dsecriptor has been selected from the pull-down menu.

2. Select terms for searching by checking the box(es) next to the desired term(s). When terms are selected, they are added to the Selected Term List on the right.

3. Click the Search button when the desired search terms are displayed in the Search Term List. The Smart Search option will automatically create the appropriate Boolean search for the selected terms!

In the sample below, the Smart Search will perform the following Boolean search:(grade level = middle school) AND (item type = constructed response) AND (Ntl. standard = EA1b OR ntl standard = EA1c)

Text Search:Use the Text Search option alone or in combination with selected terms from the catalog.

Example 1: Civil War (with “Smart” Search Type option)Entering Civil War in text search, the search will assume the space is an “or” condition and will search items that have either the words Civil or War within the item.

Example 2: Civil War (with “And” Search Type option)Entering Civil War in text search, the search will assume the space is an “and” condition and will search items that contain both the words Civil and War within the item.

Example 3: “Civil War”Entering “Civil War” (with quotes) will search for exact string match of “Civil War” within the item.

Click the blue arrow button to add the keyword to the Search Term List.

2

To refine search:

Use left blue-arrow button to remove a selected term from the Search Term List. The “Clear All” button removes all selected terms. You can also “uncheck” the term in the catalog to remove it from the list.

Viewing Items:

Search results are displayed in a new window. Close this window by clicking the “X” in the top right corner. (Closing the search results window does not exit the program or browser.) Using the tabs at the top left, you can change between different views of the search results.

table - displays one row per item of descriptive data items – displays the actual items (with descriptive data above) in a vertical

scrolling list. gallery – displays items as image thumbnails (most useful for media collections) slide – displays one item at a time, with descriptive data in the left column.

Table ViewActions Pull-down Menu: (note short-cut buttons of commonly used functions in shot above)

Sort – sort by up to 4 nested levelsCustomize – customize the data that is displayed (check or uncheck)Printable view – Use to print the current viewOpen selected as.. Test in Browser – use to save items as a test to your computer Score Guide in browser – use to save items as score guide to your computer

(these options open the items into a new window – choose “file save as” to save to your computer) Test in Word 98+ - use to open items immediately in a “simple word processor”.

(These items can be immediately edited and printed BUT does not do page formatting so is only desired for “quick” editing and proper paging doesn’t matter.)

3

Score Guide in Word 98+ - includes answers, rubrics and scored samples if available for the selected items. Quick edits but no ability to control page breaks.Get Details (useful for other media – not used in item banks)Save selected to.. Work Window – save selected items to work window. Access this window from blue bar in search window. Work window erases when user logs out. Presentations – saved presentations are shown here. Choose presentation and selected items will be appended to that presentation. Item Analysis – analyze groups of items to aid in test creation. Sample analysis later in this handout.

Step-by-Step:Suppose you would like to see results sorted by item difficulty.

1. Choose the “customize” option from the actions pull-down menu and select the property “difficulty” to be displayed. Click the update button to refresh display.

2. Choose “sort” from the actions pull-down menu and select from the pull-down menu to sort by difficulty, ascending. Click “sort” button to refresh window.

Resulting window:

4

Saving Items to your computer:

To save items as a test, from the search results or work window, choose to “Save selected items as test” either from the actions pull-down menu, or the short-cut button.

This opens the selected items in a new window, as shown below. From this new window, choose “save as” under the file menu, to save the items to your computer. Only certain browsers will download images and you will need to know how your browser functions. See supported browsers in the online help for more information.

You will next be prompted to give a filename and designate the location of this file. For browsers that include images, a separate folder of the images in the items is included in the same location as you saved the file.

Open this file in your word processor to edit and adjust page breaks as desired.

Repeat steps for the associated scoring guide.

5

Work Window:

The Work Window is like a “shopping cart” for items. Save items of interest to the work window for holding while performing other searches. The work window items can also be saved for permanent storage by entered a “useful” title and clicking the “Save” button.

The Work Window looks and operates just as the search results window, however there are a few additional functions that are not available in the search results pull-down menu.

1. You can delete selected items from the work window by clicking the item(s) and choosing delete from the pull-down menu.

2. You can sort item by item in the work window (as well as the regular sort). To do this, click on the number of the item. This will open up an edit window, as shown below. Enter in the new position number of where you want the item positioned. When you click out of the field, the window will be re-sorted.

3. Item Analysis: You can summarize the contents of your work window and presentations by any available item descriptor. This allows you to see which standards your selected items are covering. (See sample next page).

6

Sample Item Analysis by the National Standards:(available from Action pull-down menu)

Presentations are available to be taken as online tests – as self-practice tests with immediate scoring and no saving of results, but also as formative assessments with stored results and immediate analysis for the teachers.

Once work window items have been saved as described above, they are called “presentations” and they can then be accessed from the Presentations link in the blue bar of the search window.

Important Note: Saved presentations contain only partial information – the item identifier (item ID) and the sort order. When online tests are given, the system gets the item id and retrieves the original item from the bank.

When presentations are retrieved, the initial display contains only the partial information.To retrieve the entire item and all item descriptors, you need to choose “get original objects” from the actions pull-down menu. This function is only available in the presentation window. The “get original objects” function will then display the items in a new search result window and they can then be manipulated as desired.

7

Presentation Window – only showing partial information

Other functions in the pull-down menu:

Remove Selected Items – delete selected itemsDelete Presentation – delete entire presentation

Samples of dynamic reporting for item analysis and online testing:

Summarize test results by any available student demographic and any available item descriptor:

Dynamic Detail analysis is also available

8