Forcing Evaluation Blocks in a Course

CourseMill provides the capability to allow a reporter to evaluate the student’s progress in a course before moving on to the next step in the course. This feature provides a “blocking mechanism” inside a course that will not allow the student to proceed until the reporter takes an action. This blocking mechanism is a content item in the course defined as an Evaluation Gradebook item.

Here is an example of how it works.

A CPR Course has 3 content items as described and shown below:

Online content describing how CPR is performed on an adult.
Evaluation Block Item, where the student cannot proceed to the next content item until the instructor physically watches the student provide CPR on our dummy, Annie.
Final content which happens to be an on-line written test.

Setting up an Evaluation Process in a Course

Create a course with your variety of content including the Evaluation block somewhere in the middle of the content.

Using the example of the CPR course:

The first content item is our course explaining the CPR process. This is a Lectora course that we built.

Let’s jump ahead to the third content item which also is a Lectora course, but this time it is the on-line test the student will take to finish the course and get their certificate.

The middle content item is our Evaluation block. We give it a descriptive name so the student will see exactly why they are blocked.

When setting up this middle content item and associated Gradebook fields, this is where you state that the Gradebook item is an Evaluation item. You now have to specify the name of the course that the reporter will have to execute in order to evaluate and grade the student.

The instructor will see this evaluation course in their interface as well under Evaluations..

Create an evaluation course that will only be used by your reporter or instructor. This course should not show on your course catalog and therefore should be made inactive.

The evaluation course that will be launched by the reporter or instructor to state their evaluation of the student. The course should be set up such that if the score is not high enough to pass the student, the course remain incomplete.

Running through the Evaluation Process

Let’s see how a student and instructor use the Evaluation process:

Student logs in and sees the CPR course and launches the first content item.
After the course is completed, the student sees that he cannot continue with any more content items until the reporter or instructor performs an evaluation of his abilities. (The launch buttons are inaccessible.)
The instructor is notified that a student needs an evaluation done. He clicks on Evaluations on his instructor interface, and sees the student pending. And he launches the evaluation course.
The sample Evaluation course is launched asking the reporter or instructor to provide a grade. If the student passes, the course is marked complete. If the student fails, the evaluation course is left incomplete.
If he passes the student, the evaluation course shows as completed on the instructor interface, and....
And now the student sees the score he has been given and can continues on with the content of the course.

Quick Checklist for Making This Work

Here are the five things needed in order for this to work:

Course has to have a Gradebook item that is set up as an Evaluation Gradebook item type.
Student needs to be reporting to a manager.
The Outstanding Evaluation Notification at the organization level needs to be turned on so the manager will get the notification that there is an evaluation waiting.
Manager (reporter) has to have progress reports turned on for all days.
Overnight Progress reports Task has to be set up to run so the manager will get a list of all those awaiting evaluations. (This means that students will have to wait for evaluations to be run overnight.)