Thank you very much for your feedback on the BubbleScan Mobile initiative.
It turns out that most of you don’t see it as a way to increase your revenues or even have a significant impact on your operations. We will not be moving forward with that feature.
Unless you have $5000 you’d like to invest in it. In that case, please let me know, and we can have this implemented within 5-6 weeks.
If anyone wants to give me their input on an updated student report for ACT and SAT, please call or email me. This is the week to send me your thoughts.
Here is what I have so far:
Over the past several years, whenever I needed some help manually capturing data I have utilized the help of Ruth Mangahas from the Philippines. She is very fast, very reliable, and just a pleasure to work with.
If you need some help capturing answer keys, manually entering poorly or incorrectly scanned answer sheets, essays, or with any other office job, I can highly recommend her. Because of my work with her, Ruth is familiar with the relevant parts of OnlineScoreTracker. We have been working together on various odd jobs since 2016 (I think). I hire her through an international online job market called upwork.com.
Her profile is here
https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~01f649c5c4ab3d851c?s=1017484851352698991
You will need to create a free account with upwork. Upwork also allows you to message her and tell her exactly what you want.
To reach Ruth outside of upwork, please email her at ruthisabel30[at]gmail.com. [Please replace [at] with @, just trying to prevent unnecessary spam for Ruth :)]
July 13, 2022:
We received an email today from Incopro, who are acting in behalf of ACT, threatening legal action against us if we do not remove all copyrighted material from this website.
We are a small business, just barely profitable and standing up to ACT is out of the question.
To comply with their request, we are taking a step back and reverting to the way we did things when we got started. We provide test grading and reporting framework. You provide the tests and answer keys.
Specifically, we will be disabling all ACT SYSTEM KEYS on our websites by August 1, 2022, which allow us to make these adjustments within the 21 day window they provide us. This means after August 1, 2022 you will not be able to use system keys for grading or as a template for your own local keys. All grading of ACT tests will be done using your own local keys.
Any existing reports based on ACT system keys will still be available. None of that data will be removed or affected.
We believe this should not impact your continued business with us. Please contact me (Joerg Weser) if you have any questions.
One of the main reasons for the student portal is so students can view their test scores. In the past, those scores were available in the Student Portal as soon as the tests were graded. We have now released a new feature that allows you to control what test scores and what section scores a student sees. Maybe you want to give the instructor first dibs on review the test before the student sees it? Maybe you want to wait until you can discuss a homework assignment together? Whatever your reason, now you can.
In Preferences – Web Panel under Student Portal, we’ve added a new option that lets you set the default behavior for the account. By default, these boxes are all checked, meaning that when a student completes an Online Answer Sheet, their test scores are immediately displayed in the Student Portal. If a scanned bubble sheet was graded because you processed it through BubbleScan Web, the scores are displayed in the Student Portal. And if you manually enter responses though OnlineScoreTracker, the scores are immediately visible in to the student.
If the boxes are unchecked then the test scores originating from one of these data entry methods are not visible in the Student Portal until an admin, supervisor, or instructor specifically releases them to be displayed there.
There are two places where scores can be released for display in the Student Portal.
The first place is the TESTS menu.
In a new column labeled “Student Portal” we have placed a visibility status icon. You can click on an icon to view what sections of that test are visible in the Student Portal. As you have probably already guessed, a solid eye means all test sections are visible, including the full student report, a crossed-out eye means no scores are visible at all, and a gray or dotted-lined eye means some scores are visible to the student along with a preliminary/partial score report.
The status is changed by selecting one or more tests of the same test type and selecting “View/Hide in Student Portal” from the ACTION dropdown menu. The menu option will not be available when tests of different types (i.e. ACT and SAT) are selected.
The other place is the the SCORES menu of a particular student. Hovering over the “eye” icon shows what sections are visible, clicking on the icon allows you to edit the status for each section or for the entire test.
When all the sections of a test are visible to the student, we also display the full student report. We have several different versions for SAT and ACT, if you haven’t checked out the newer ones, maybe this is a good reminder to do just that.
When not all the sections of a test are visible to the student, we are displaying a preliminary or partial, simplified test report that looks something like this:
If your test has been mapped to test categories or skills, the respective sections will also be shown:
You are about to create student profiles in your OnlineScoreTracker account and you know you want your students to access their Student Portal so they can take online tests and view their scores online.
We think a slick way to communicate the necessary information to the students is to use a keyword of “verify” in the password field when you create the student profile and a customized “Set Password” email template. Our system will automatically send a personalized email to every new student along with the login details and a link to set their password. Here is how this works in detail:
1. Review and if necessary modify the email template “Set Password” – or create your own. This is the email that gets sent to the student. To review and edit this template go to Tools – Email – Templates, then click on the Edit pencil associated with the template “Set Password”:
You can change the title of the email and any of the text. Here is what it says by default (at least at the time this post was written):
Email Title:
Welcome - please set your password
Email Message:
Dear {{firstname}}, We have set up your own Student Portal.The Student Portal allows you to:
1. see and print all your score reports,
2. read messages we may leave you from time to time, and
3. fill out online answer sheets for practice tests or home work assignments you may be taking at home.To set your personal password, please click here:
{{set_password_url}}
You can then log in at any time by visiting:
{{url}}
and providing your username:
{{username}}
and your personal password.We look forward to working with you to prepare you for the ACT/SAT.
Your team at {{account}}
The special codes in {{ }} are filled in by OnlineScoreTracker. Here is what the email looks like that is based on the above template.
2. With your email template in place, you now want to tell our system that it should use this email template when the automatic email is sent. To do this click on Tools – Preferences and locate the section on “Creating Student Accounts” and then choose the email template for “Email Template when password = Verify”:
3. When you now add the student profile to your OnlineScoreTracker account all you need to do is specify a password of “verify”. There are three ways (manual, csv, API) for you to add student profiles and the “verify” password works the same for all three methods.
You’ve probably had to close down your facility during this coronavirus outbreak and gone over to tutoring students online.
Using our Online Answer Sheets you can administer practice tests remotely.
Provide the student with a practice test, then ask them to log into their OnlineScoreTracker student portal and fill out their responses on an Online Answer Sheet.
Tests are graded immediately and the student report is available to the student through their student portal.
Here is how it works.
The student(s) can now log into their Student Portal, click on TAKE A TEST, select the test type and then the test.
Each test section is started separately.
The student can choose to enter their responses by selecting radio buttons
or by typing in letters.
March 12, 2020:
Today we updated our OnlineScoreTracker grading system to use the new single-page PSAT bubble sheet.
As a customer you can access this new form in two ways:
1. Preprint Bubble Sheets
2. Blank Bubble Sheets
Recently, we’ve noticed that Chrome now offers the option to not shrink the printed page. The new setting is found under More Settings – and is called Scale: Custom with a value of 100.
A good way to check if your form is printing at 100% is to look at the black alignment squares at the top. The squares are 1/4″ x 1/4″ and should be about 1/4″ from the top and either side of the printed page. It doesn’t have to be exact, but if one of the squares touches the edge of the paper, or is cut off, or is 1/2 inch or more from the edge of the paper, proper reading by our system can be compromised.The other place to access and print blank bubble sheets is through TOOLS – PRINT BUBBLE SHEETS. Just click on any of the links.
If you have any questions or comments, as always, we’d love to hear from you.
Also, if you see test types in any of these screen shots that you would like to use in your account, we’ll gladly enable them for you.
We are updating the PSAT form very soon.
Currently we are using a 2-page form, the new form is more compact and is a 1-page form.
If you have any concerns about our abandoning the 2-page form, please contact us right away.
When we switch to the single page form (most likely the first part of next week), the old 2-page forms will no longer be recognized by the OnlineScoreTracker.
When you pre-print bubble sheets with student data, we will be printing on the new 1-page PSAT form.
If you have concerns, please reach out now, otherwise, enjoy the convenience of the single page PSAT form.
Thanks for being great customers.
Two big enhancements to the OnlineScoreTracker for 2020 are:
We would love to get your input as we create the specifications for our development team.
Here are some higher level guidelines:
1. We do not want to create a stand-alone practice solution, but something that supports you, the tutor, our customer. Khan Academy and the ACT Online Prep are beautiful examples. We do want to develop something along those lines. But, again, our commitment is to you, the tutor, and we want our solution to support you.
2. Every test question can now be assigned to a difficulty level and up to three custom categories (or skills). The ability to do this is in place and has been for several weeks (or months). We want to modify our SAT/PSAT and ACT reports so they can utilize this additional information.
3. Our vision is that we our 2020 SAT/PSAT and ACT student reports provide very ‘actionable’ information to the student and the tutor. What should the student work on?
4. As the tutor you can then assign ‘practice modules’ to the student, which is a set of practice questions focused on a particular topic.
5. We will provide content, but you will have the ability to create your own list of custom categories/skills, your own questions, and assemble your own ‘practice modules’ using either your own questions or draw from our questions.
6. We will monitor the quality of questions using point-biserial correlation and the difficulty index. Our goal is to keep updating questions so eventually we only have the BEST questions in our system.
If you have thoughts or ideas regarding what should be on the new student reports, what they should look like, or how the ‘test questions’ should be handled, please reach out to me now (before the end of December 2019). Thank you for being great customers. It’s a pleasure working with you and for you. – Joerg Weser