Using Yardstick Measure™ to bank platform with robust reporting functionality
Many of us at Yardstick use reports generated by Measure daily, for both item banking and exam scoring purposes. All reports can be found under “Reports” tab on the dashboard.
What I like the most about the reports in Measure is that they give me access to a large amount of data in the item bank, and that I can easily configure their content. The reports are downloaded in the csv format and can be easily saved in the xls or xlsx format if necessary. Report configuration is done through the selection of variables from the item bank to include in the report. I use this feature when I need to zoom in on a particular set of exam questions in the item bank (e.g., only experimental questions or only questions written in the past week).
Measure reports can be roughly divided into two categories, those useful for item banking and those useful for exam administration.
In this post, let me walk you through the reports used for item banking purposes.
“Items” Report
An “Items” report can retrieve a set of exam questions or the entire item bank from Measure. Questions can be filtered by the date of creation, item bank, competency folder, case name (aka passage name), author (i.e., name of item writer) or even by exam form (see Figure 1).
By clicking on “Configure” button, I specify the data to be exported. Useful fields are provided in Table 1 below. The “Items” report comes in handy when I need to check the status of an item bank and compare it to exam blueprint requirements. I also use this report to see how much progress an item writer has made or where more questions need to be written for the item bank.
Figure 1. “Items” Report configuration panel
This feature can also be quite useful for any work that involves exam forms. In a few seconds, Measure can download an entire exam form (both questions and meta-data) in a csv file. Needless to say, this function is much appreciated by those who have ever attempted to manually update exam forms. The “Items” report allows users to track blueprint parameters of questions they add to or take out from the exam form.
“Questions Comments” Report
“Question Comments” Report is a new feature in Measure (see Figure 2). It provides a long-awaited summary of question comments left by item writers and reviewers in Measure. This report is an invaluable tool for group item review sessions where a facilitator needs to share item reviewers’ feedback with an Exam Committee. The “Question Comments” report includes comments by question and specifies who left the comment and when it was done.
Figure 2. “Question Comments” Report configuration panel