Skill Management - Part 8 - Automatically Assign Tests

Automatically Assign a Test upon Skill Task Completion

This feature allows following a reading assignment with a quiz to test the reader’s comprehension of the document they have just read. The system does this automatically without need of separately assigning a knowledge test to those who have completed a reading assignment.

One test can be associated with multiple documents and passing it will become the requisite to attain the ‘confirmed’ status of the related ‘skill confirmation’ tasks.

The already existing skill verification step can still be used, where someone can sign off the process of a user reading a document and passing the associated test.

The test records will continue to appear in the ‘Competency > Tests > List Tests’ tab and in the candidates’ ‘Staff Profiles’.

Permissions Required

To associate tests with a document’s skill confirmation tasks, the permission, ‘Skilled Staff:Add Skilled Staff’ is required in the OU where the document resides.

Associating a Competency Test with a given Document

Tests can be associated with reading assignments under the ‘Skilled’ tab of each document.

Clicking the button, ‘Assign Competency Test’, will bring up a pop-up window where a competency test can be selected from a list of the published tests available to the user logged in.

Once selected and saved, the test will be automatically assigned to any users who are tasked to read the document.

There are buttons to remove (Remove Test) or change (Change Test) the test selected.

• If a test is changed, any unconfirmed ‘skill’ tasks will be updated accordingly and use the new test.
• If the test is changed and a confirmed skill is reissued, the recipient will have to pass the new test.
• If a test is in-progress or awaiting marking and the test template for the document is changed, it will not be affected or replaced.
• If the test is removed from the ‘Skilled’ tab of a document, any outstanding ‘unconfirmed’ skills will no longer require completing a test when they are confirmed.
  
  

Following the Process

When a user who has been assigned reading a document associated with a test, clicks the ‘Confirm’ button of the reading (‘skill confirmation’) task, the test will immediately pop up so the user can complete it.

The reading task can be issued directly from within the document or from a Skilled Group.

Active skill tasks can have the following statuses:

• Unconfirmed - when the user hasn’t started the task or when they have failed one attempt of a test which has settings to allow re-taking it
  • If the associated test has a cool-off period after failed attempts, the candidate will have to wait the declared amount of time before trying to complete the test again and the ‘skill’ will remain ‘Unconfirmed’.
• Confirmed - when a user has confirmed reading the document and passed the related test
• Test Awaiting Marking - when the user has submitted a test which includes text based questions and it requires marking by an examiner
• Test Not Passed - when a user has failed a test the maximum number of times (according to retake settings)
  • an additional ‘Reissue’ button is available in the Actions column to allow reissuing just the test

When the test is submitted, the skill record will be updated and a link to the test results becomes available in the screen which pops up when clicking the skill record.

If the test is awaiting marking and the user has permission to mark it, they can do it by clicking the ‘View test results’ button.

General Considerations

There are different scenarios so here are some points about what to expect under certain conditions:

• A skill record will only be marked as ‘Confirmed’ once the associated test has been passed.
  
  
• If the skill verification step is enabled in the document’s OU, an associated test will still need to be completed. Once the test is passed, the skill record status will be, ‘Awaiting Verification’.
  
  
• If the associated test has re-take settings to allow more than one attempt, the ‘skill confirmation’ task will remain valid until the test is passed or the candidate has failed the maximum number of attempts.
  
  
• If a user has already passed the test associated with a reading task, the user won’t have to take the test again and the skill will immediately be marked as ‘Confirmed’.
  
  
  
• The latest published version of a test will always be used when a user invokes it upon completing a reading assignment. So, if a skill confirmation task is issued and then the associated test is updated before the task is completed, when the user later confirms having read the document, the new test version will be presented to them.
  
  
• Competency Tests templates can’t be archived or deleted if they are assigned to any documents.

This is the last article in this user guide.

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The previous article covers Verifying & Managing Skills