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Getting Started with Teach for Assessment
Getting Started with Teach for Assessment

General Information relating to teach for assessment

Martine Holland avatar
Written by Martine Holland
Updated over a week ago

Teach is the DataCamp tool for content authoring that you will be using to write timed assessment items. To get you started with item writing, we will walk you through the entire process using our training assessment (so no need to worry about breaking any live content!).

  • We will give you access after the first onboarding session, you can follow along with this material creating your own branch and items.

  • You will always come back to the last branch you were working on - you can see the branch name in the bottom left, in this example, "Master"

Open the training pool

Step 1: Create a new branch

Master is the live test content, so we always work on branches and master will be locked from editing. The staging branch is our working version of the pool.

  • Use the "Change Branch" button in the bottom left (where is says "Master")

  • Branch from "Staging"

  • Name your branch to reflect the work and who you are e.g. aimee-onboarding-jan-23

  • Keep your branch name relatively short. Longer names can cause build errors.

  • Don't use spaces or special characters in names

  • Once you begin to write items for live tests:

    • Include the issue number in your branch name

    • Create a new branch for each issue you are assigned.

Hit "Create & Change Branch"!

You will be moved to your new branch and the build process will start. You will need to have a passed build before you start doing any work, so that you can preview items as you create them.

  • The first build will always fail

  • Don't start work until you have a green (Passed) build.

  • Even when you have a passed build, check the build log. Sometimes there can be errors here even when the overall build passes.

  • See the short video below for how to start a manual build

Didn't work?

  • Try starting a manual build again.

  • Still not working? Contact us, there might be a wider problem impacting the build system.

Step 2: Start Adding Items!

  • The pool will already have been set up with all of the sections that will be included in the assessment

  • You should add items in the section indicated by the task that you have been allocated

  • The task given will indicate the types of item that you should add. For details on how to author specific item types see the following articles:

Step 3: Review your Items

It's important to review your items yourself before you submit them to see how test takers will experience them. There are a couple of ways to confirm your item is going to work as expected.

  • Use the preview button. In the bottom right-hand corner. This will open a preview window and will work without saving the item. If the preview fails, there is a problem with your item that you need to fix.

  • Save and build. If the preview works, the build should pass. If it doesn't pass, the build log might help you figure out the problem. We can help interpret build errors, just drop us a message.

  • As mentioned above, do check the build log for errors.

  • Expert Review. At the bottom of the build log you will find a link to Expert Review. This will show you all of the items on your branch.

  • You will need the Item Key, which you can find at the top of the edit view for the item, to match to items in Expert Review.

Step 4: Submit Review, and Repeat!!

  • Submit all the items for a single task for review following the instructions

  • Repeat for your next task, creating one branch for each GitHub task

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