The SmartRubric Blog | SmartRubric

'Forcing the Fit' in Special Schools When Karl O’Reilly, Headteacher, visited the SmartRubric stand at BETT 2019, he was looking for an assessment management system that would help him solve a really difficult problem at Coppice School, a community day school for students with severe learning difficulties. Coppice School had already implemented other assessment/progress tracking applications, but none of them were able to show pupil progress in a way that was meaningful for their students. I learned from Karl that special schools frequently have to make do with systems designed for mainstream schools, plugging the gaps with a mix of extra systems and spreadsheets to approximate the unique needs of their pupils and staff. At Coppice, 'forcing the fit' in this way meant it was difficult to analyse the true progress pupils are making— meaning a lot of time, money and effort wasted guessing at which kinds of interventions are working and which aren’t. Karl expla...

We're happy to say that we are now able to connect SmartRubric to your MIS via Assembly! Here's our post about it if you missed it.  If you are here, I'm assuming that you've already requested a free Data Manager account from SmartRubric, and you have set up an Assembly Account (if not, please kick off the process by emailing  data@smartrubric.com ). How to connect your data:  Before you begin, you will need:  A SmartRubric Data Manager account A working Assembly Account, connected to your MIS Your log in information for the Assembly Platform Sign in to https://www.smartrubric.com with your Data Manager account Go to https://www.smartrubric.com/connect Click the Connect Now  button and follow the instructions on the screen to authenticate with your Assembly account information. Now you will be prompted to configure your connection to Assembly. If you have been using SmartRubric without a connection to your MIS, this is where you connect th...

The run-up to the holidays is often the toughest term of the school year. It's often the longest, it's dark when you leave and dark when you get home, and the honeymoon period of good behaviour in your lessons has worn off. You might be looking down the barrel of mid-year mock exam preparation (and marking!) and the reality that the coursework your KS4 groups were meant to have finished last year hasn't even been started, let alone marked. But there's good news too. Now's a great time to make some changes to your assessment practice that'll pay off big time down the line in terms of impact  and time saved . I give you...  the humble rubric . You can either print these out and use them as a pro-forma (good), or  you can sign up for SmartRubric and use an interactive rubric to mark (better). First, I'll explain what a rubric is, how to make them, and how to use them effectively. Then, I'll give you three really good reasons why you should be usin...

If you are syncing your school MIS with SmartRubric, you may find yourself wanting to add students or student groups (like classes or clubs) that do not exist in your MIS . These are called ad hoc students  or ad hoc student groups , and they are a valuable tool for extending the functionality of SmartRubric. Want to put a group of students on behaviour report? Create an ad hoc student group, add your naughty kids, and make some behaviour rubrics. (You could even go so far as to hijack the moderation feature and get all of the kids' form teachers to contribute!). Want to evaluate a group of trainee teachers progress against the teaching standards? Add the trainees as  ad hoc students  and then create an ad hoc student group  so you can assess them over time, just like any other teaching group. To add ad hoc students and student groups , you can navigate to 'Students' or 'Current classes' in the menu bar, respectively. You will have a button at the top of th...

We are now ready to connect your MIS to SmartRubric via Assembly! Email data@smartrubric.com  to get set up. Over the next week or so I'll publish some more guidance on how this works, as well as tutorials for those of you who have already connected your systems.  I'm really excited to announce that beginning in September, we plan for SmartRubric to be able to integrate with some school management systems -- SIMS, ScholarPack, Bromcom, RM Integris, Arbor and Advanced.  That means that if you connect SmartRubric to your school MIS via Assembly , you and your department will be able to log in and get marking -- no need to set up classes and students ! The integration won't cost you anything if you have 15 or more teachers using SmartRubric, otherwise, SmartRubric will levy a £6/month flat charge. If you would like to start using SmartRubric in your department(s) starting from September with an MIS integration, I'd be happy to offer you a totally free trial ...

As exam season approaches, ensuring that you are providing accurate grades for mock exams and practice questions is really important. In this post, I'm going to explain the tools available to you in SmartRubric for setting up correctly weighted assessment objectives.  SmartRubric is a GIGO  system -- if you set up a good rubric, your marking experience will be smooth, accurate and painless. If you set up an awkward or incorrect rubric, you will not get the most out of SmartRubric. But don't worry -- I'm here to help! You can always  email caroline@smartrubric.com to get personal help.  Typically, exam specifications will give you guidance about how much each assessment objective is worth, but it isn't always clear how best to represent that in SmartRubric. I'm going to go through an example where some assessment objectives are weighted more heavily (worth more) than others. I'll break down the mark scheme, and then build it in SmartRubric. EXAMPLE: ...