Major+Programs+for+Data+Analysis

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The most prevalent program in the realm of education data analysis came up as ExamView by the eInstruction company. I'll admit this is where I started my search since my district uses it, but after a lot of searching no other company offered as much as they did in one suite of software. ExamView offers their programs in the same that Photoshop offers their Creative Suite with applications for photography, graphic design, and video editing. You can import existing tests, create new ones, assess them, and finally analyze them all within the same suite of software. Also, there is not confusion over which to buy since they sell them as one existing package.

ExamView Test Manager
Probably the single most important of all of the programs. This is where all the data analysis goes on. While this program requires the most set up, it's major benefit is the production of data. As you can see in the image above, the home screen provides space for students, scores, and assessments. Students are imported and scanners (Opscan Brand or any Scanner will do) are used to retrieve the data. From that point you can start to look at the data.



The above image represents the item analysis report for a class. It should be noted that subgroups can be created for any filter.The most common is teacher or section, but it could easily be set up to control age, gender, ethnicity, etc.; it just depends on how much input you provide when importing your students. This report is powerful for teachers reflect upon test questions. If the distractor choice is receiving too high of a percentage, some reworking to the question must be done. On the other hand, teachers can easily see if the students possibly misunderstood the lesson based upon the percentage of choices the teacher chooses. For example, a student might have misunderstood a lesson on tone and chosen a feeling word that they misunderstood but was never clarified on the day of the lesson. It also flags questions that scored less than predetermined (in this case 70) percentage. This will stand out to teachers and help them focus their data analysis review with the other course teachers.

The above image is one of the most vital printouts a teacher can have at their disposal. If they have spend the time to code the test, this will show what percentage of students "hit the mark" for each standard. It shows percentile. As before the filter can be set from all down to individual students. I have personal used this during parent teacher conferences to show parents how their students are dong on the standards of my class and the state standards. It can also be used to assess whether teachers are being equal with their distribution of teaching skills. For example, in a math course, this printout might show that one teacher taught triangles heavily while another's printout showed an emphasis on fractions. As I stated in my previous page, this will really help develop collaboration amongst teachers.

This is where I start to see some limitations with ExamView; the charts are very boring. You will see in my later page that this can be alleviated by using some simple web apps to visualize the data in a more appealing way. However, what exam lacks in esthetics it makes up for in customizability. The filters are the same here, but you can also set a curve to show the students just how close they were to pushing the bars more to the right. When the other teachers and I looked at this chart, we realized this unit needed to be retaught on some level. It was only after looking at the other reports in combination with this one, though, that we were able to see exactly what we needed to focus on. This chart can also be shown to students let them reflect as a class on how they met their objectives. Keep in mind, no personal data is shown in any of the three report images I have presented.



**ExamView Test Generator and Import Utility**
This portion of the ExamView software suite is the starting point. You can either create banks of questions that can later be pulled into a test, or you can create a test from scratch to use in the near future. When creating questions, you are given three options for coding the question. You can do national standards, local standards, and level of rigor. In my department's case, we use the Common Core standard, the term being assessed, and a simple level one through three rigor indication. Download the ExamView example below and you can easily see how we coded it (This test was created before the adoption of Common Core).

The nice part of about create the question banks, and just question banks in general, is that you can later pull from these for formative assessments at anytime. When a class needs enrichment or reteaching, educators can utilize these banks and form tests in the test generator. What about the teachers who have everything as word documents? Easy, a few simple formatting changes and the important utility will create a bank of questions from the word document. This was amazing for my department. We spent one entire teacher institute day creating banks. Now we can take these coded materials and make focused, targeted assessments on the fly. [|Example Tests (Coded to teacher standards]

ExamView to Moodle: This video highlights the process of importing ExamView questions into Moodle so the students can take a test. This also gives you instant feedback as opposed to running scantrons. media type="youtube" key="nqUZWHravrY" height="241" width="435" align="center"

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