Chalk & Wire

Author Unlimited ePortfolios & Assignments

Give learners and staff the ability to author, share, and meaningfully reflect on their academic experiences through our easy-to-use eportfolio authoring tools. Alternatively, give an instructor the freedom to create their own assignments or to deploy templates developed centrally with their own due dates and direct delivery. Portfolios and assignments can be linked to formal programs and courses, reflective in nature, or showcase a learner’s skills to potential employers. 

Personalized dashboard interface. The C&W dashboard gives learners an individualized interface that organizes and presents information relevant to their personal, academic and professional lives.

Powerful sharing capabilities. Portfolio owners can share their portfolios as a whole or in parts with a variety of internal and external reviewers. Once a portfolio is shared, users can comment on each others’ work and collaborate on group projects.

Rapid, easy authoring. Point-and-click to add text, images, files, movies, and forms to any open space on a page. Never leave the screen to add content. Choose to add text using a robust editor and embed, resize and place images accurately. Drag and drop files to be attached. Full support is provided for the upload and conversion of video and audio to streaming formats to radically speed up the review process. Streaming formats for Apple iPads and other mobile devices are provided.

Structure portfolios with Tables of Contents (TOCs) & Assignment design tools. Use TOCs as templates for defining portfolio structures. Provide learners with instructions, questions, attached resources and even linked assessment instruments and standards. Engage instructors by allowing them to create their own assignments outside of a portfolio structure with custom instructions, or choose centrally developed assignment templates and rubrics to assure data alignment.

Easily share learning artifacts. Documents, images and multimedia files. Evidence of learning is easily embedded into portfolios. Individual portfolio pages and entire sections can also be reused and shared across multiple representations.

Transportability for lifelong learning and career advancement. Portfolios can be downloaded and saved locally, saved to an external drive, burned to disc, or published and edited on a website. Expired accounts remain housed on our secure servers and may be reactivated months or even years later.

Assess & Provide Feedback

Learner-centric assessment that transcends grades. Assessors can evaluate evidence of achievement and provide timely and relevant feedback to learners.

Flexible scoring and commenting. Built with efficiency in mind, our assessment interface allows assessors to grade student work using a variety of assessment instruments including rubrics and checklists. Assessors can comment directly on student work by highlighting a section of text and leaving either a text or audio comment.

Full support for mobile devices. Our latest innovation allows you to “point-and-tap” assess even with the largest assessment instruments and work samples. Zoom in and out with the spread of your fingers. Tap to see the whole assessment instrument and assess from the full view, or tap to reduce the view to a simple grid that shows you the details of the instrument as you swipe over it.

Personalized dashboard interface. Assessors can access all of their students’ submissions; view and examine all the assessments they have already performed, are in-progress, or are pending.

Create assessment chains & escalations. Work can be passed on to individuals or assessment pools for further evaluation. Escalation based on student performance automates remedial actions such as reassessment of marginal performances, as well as committee assessments.

Assess work using a variety of assessment instruments and methods. Chalk & Wire allows for the assessment of portfolios (in whole or in part), manual assessment of student work not captured in the portfolio and offline assessment that can be uploaded to the system at a later date. Rules for anonymity, load and randomness can also be applied.

Surveys & Forms

Use the online form builder to create a variety of surveys and forms. Collect demographic information about your learners circumstances and dispositions.

Course and program evaluations. Gather useful data on course quality and feedback on student experience. Easily deploy program evaluations as part of a capstone portfolio, ensuring 100% completion rates.

Portfolio embedded forms. Allow you to support work integrated learning activities such as journals and counting experience hours by enabling the collection of data directly into forms in the student portfolio.

Dispositions & demographic surveys. Deploy surveys that aggregate data on student dispositions and demographics, then use this data to perform action research by filtering results against learner assessment scores.

Multiple question types. A wide range of question types are provided from type-in-text to ranged choices, response grids, multiple and single choice questions. Headings can be placed anywhere in the survey to break sections and to provide instruction. Branching question threads are also supported.

Data import tools. You may have learner data (test scores, normed exam results, demographics) already available to you. This information can be easily imported into Chalk & Wire for use in reports.

Reporting & Analytics

Actionable and easy to use reporting that goes beyond medians and averages. Demonstrate evidence of learning outcomes and celebrate achievements.

New on-line reporting tools. With a few clicks choose different time intervals, views, and extract data sets to desired variables and conditions. Add or remove variables to instantly redraw the report to test hypotheses. Order and re-order tables with one click. Drill down from the instrument report view to see criteria, linked standards, constituent work samples, and a full range of other information related to each report. Save report settings for later use. Save reports for circulation, comment and publication.

Four types of reporting. Ability to provision point in time, progress over time, data driven improvement and validity reporting. Perform action research on your students or your program to foster continuous improvement.

Regression analysis. Compare rubrics and assessments for evidence of predictive validity. Compare summative scores with internal holistic assessments to see if there is any correlation.

Data only accounts. Learners do not need to be creating a portfolio to make use of their data. Leverage legacy data making it easy to hit the ground running and ramp up your assessment system over time.

Systemic validity diagnostics. Allows you to test any elements of your system design that might compromise validity and fairness. The pre-built reports will even suggest what actions you could take to correct any problems however they may arise.

Collaborate

Anyone using Chalk & Wire can set up, manage, create and publish collaborative workspaces. Work with invited peers to asynchronously author together.

Granular permissions. Assessors can access all of their students’ submissions; view and examine all the assessments they have already performed, are in-progress, or are pending.

Document check-in, check-out. Control versioning by allowing team members to check documents in and out. While being edited the document is locked and when checked in a new version is presented alongside the older one.

Threaded discussions. Set up, manage, participate and follow discussions that address issues related to the work. Give life and a social environment to the workspace and its members.

At-a-glance work management & review. See daily roll-ups of completed work. Generate histories of each person’s involvement over the life of the project. Track and follow new discussions. Meet only with those that need help or guidance, leaving others who are on track to proceed.

Peer assessment tools. Each work space allows users, if requested, to assess and comment on each others contributions to the overall project. Assessors use this with student groups to gather data about different perceptions and can teach about the value of different kinds of work that results in a good, final product.

Flexible System Administration

Centrally manage your assessment system. Powerful APIs allow for integrations and streamlined workflows.

Manage campus wide deployments. Departments allow you to manage your system by filtering portfolios, rubrics, and users. Departments also provide you with another way to isolate data in your reporting.

Archiving Submissions for future review. All learner portfolio submissions are versioned and archived along with related artifacts and assessment data. This provides for future comparative use of the submitted work in accreditation, research and program-audits.

Integrate with learning management systems. Embed portfolio and program level assessments directly into LMS courses, making it easy for learners to access their assessments and portfolios.

Robust data importers. Import data for users who are no longer with the institution to extend the size of a comparable dataset. Bulk update user demographics and other user information from any spreadsheet or data dump in ASCII formats.

Create accreditation and faculty exhibits. Our tools allow you to easily assemble and edit analytics, narratives and work samples to present to anyone. Use them with accreditation teams, or prospective employers.

Facilitate meaningful interaction. The key goal of the Chalk & Wire system is that meaningful interactions are very easily accommodated by all stakeholders concerned; moving teaching and learning to highly productive and engaging levels.