Contributors are those people – teachers, planners, anyone – who have good ideas about assessments and learning activities, and are prepared to share them here. To become a contributor, please contact us; we’d love to have you involved! As with the other permissions in Compass, the Contributor role is listed on the Toolkits and permissions tab of your personal homepage.
How does it work?
I’m thinking that most of the people interested in becoming a contributor will already be familiar with how Compass works, but just in case, I’d recommend reading the information on these pages:
- Understanding constructive alignment
- Understanding taxonomies of learning and cognition
- Understanding the three A’s: assessments, activities, and access skills
- Plan a paper: How teachers will use your contributions
Thus, the paper planning toolkit for teachers depends on a database of assessment methods, learning activities, and access skills, all linked to one another and to the most appropriate level of Bloom’s and the adapted STRIP (STructure and Relationship In Problems) taxonomies. It’s these collections to which contributors can add in order that Compass can make appropriate and genuine suggestions to the teachers who use the toolkit.
Each item has a name, a description, and a list of connections to the two other A’s. That is, assessments have links to activities and access skills, etc. Assessments also need to be linked to the appropriate level of sophistication (according to Bloom’s taxonomy) and complexity (according to the adapted STRIP taxonomy). Finally, every item you create will be available to teachers through the paper planning toolkit.
Frequently asked questions
What level of detail do I need to use? The assessment and activity suggestions are there to give on-the-ground teachers inspiration and ideas for their papers. They don’t need to be extensively detailed, but their name and notes do need to be enough to point the teachers in the right direction.
Does it matter which faculty I’m from? No, but if there’s something specific to your discipline, you can make that clear in the notes section. Remember that these are just examples for teachers; they don’t need to be exactly true to life in every aspect, but they should be real enough to be helpful to the teacher looking for alternate means of assessment or class activity.
There’s already a verb I wanted to create, but it’s at a different level, or means something else. There are two options. If it’s a naming issue – that is, there’s another item with a similar name but which really means something different – then please create a new item, and tweak the names of both items to indicate the differences between them. On the other hand, if you just need to use it at a different level without substantial changes, please use the Edit button (i) to expand the levels at which it’s applied (see below for the how-to instructions).
How do I add a new assessment, activity or access skill?
From your Toolkits and permissions page (a,b), open the Contributor homepage (c). This opens the Contributor page (below) which contains links to the three different categories to which you can contribute: assessments (d), activities (e), and access skills (f). You can also see the wizard which teachers will use under the Wizard button (g). These links are also shown on the left-hand side bar too.
The list pages all look alike – the assessment suggestions list page is shown below. Where appropriate, there are tabs dividing the suggestions (h). Clicking on a row (i) will open a detail page (see later). The other activities, access skills or assessments are listed in each row (j) as well. To create a new entry, click the Add new button (k) in the left-hand side menu, or to remove one entirely, click the Delete (l) button.
After clicking a row (i) the detail page for that item will open (see below). You’ll see any notes about the item, as well as lists of other things to which it relates (g, h). To edit it, click the Edit button (i), or to create a new item use the Add new button (j).
The detail page describes the suggestion, including its relationship to other suggestions, or supporting activities or access skills as needed. For assessments the STRIP and Bloom’s levels are shown as well. Clicking on any of the links on the detail page opens the detail page for that item, or use the navigation links in the left-hand menu to browse other lists or return to the Contributors’ home page.
Compass Curriculum Navigation 