The SmartRubric Blog | SmartRubric

The final feature that we planned to implement before the launch (!) at Bett 2017  is complete, and I am maybe even more excited about it than I was about moderation . You now have access to a fully featured query engine that lets you drill down into specific student groups and track progress. You want to compare how Year 11 is performing compared to year 7 versus the whole school? Easy peasy, lemon etc: HOT.  You want to compare how year 7 EAL history students are progressing against literacy objectives with how they are doing in science? You only need to think it and it is so! What's that you say? You want a nice line graph that maps it all out for you against a baseline? Why certainly! Your assistant head prefers raw data so she can make her own infographics? We have you covered. The query engine means you can filter student progress by a whole range of student, subject and skill characteristics. So, if a key group for you is lower income white boys, or G&T ben...

If you are finding SmartRubric useful as an individual teacher, you might not realise how much more  useful it can be if you use it with a department or school. Broadly speaking, within a department or school, you can share student data and look at how students are progressing against key skills across the curriculum. It also gives you the ability to moderate work and communicate directly with your colleagues. This level is an area that we are excited to develop, and we are really interested to hear what you have to say about what would make SmartRubric most useful for you and your department. All you need to do is upgrade your account by going to your Billing Area  and select 'Administrator Subscription'. Decide how many members of your department you want, and create your subscription. You'll need to log out and back in again once you've done this. Once you have administrator rights (you will know because your navigation bar will turn teal and you get some extr...

I'm not going to lie, I think moderation might be the feature that I was most looking forward to including in SmartRubric. Like many KS4 and KS5 teachers, I have participated in many epic moderation sessions. We can't really help with this  part of moderation. They all start the same way. The big table. The enormous stack of coursework files next to each seat. There is no kettle, but that is intentional. Fleeing to the staff room at regular intervals on the flimsy excuse of a cuppa is one of the only things that keeps you sane. The jovial, strained tones of your colleagues at the beginning of the session, the grim and aching silence at the end. And the worst part -- the sheer volume of admin. There's keeping track of what everyone gave each piece, and why. There's recording your final mark and the justification for it. There's filling in pro forma after pro forma in snatched moments for days afterwards to prepare your sample. There's the horrifying reali...

SmartRubric is designed to help you make really really accurate, sensible rubrics. When you create a rubric, you can slice up and weight assessment objectives and level descriptors however you want. So really, if you are marking work and the calculated grades are coming out too high or too low, that's a problem with your rubric, and the assessment police say: "fix the rubric, not the mark!" However. In real life, there are times when that isn't going to work. Schools are not machines, students are not cogs, teachers are not automatons. You, the teachers, are the professionals, and your judgement is paramount. SmartRubric does not want to get in your way. If you need to edit a mark, just type over it like so: Type over the score shown on the marking page for that student/assessment.  Once you have edited the mark, a little pencil icon will show up next to it to indicate that the mark has been edited. It will no longer update when you click on the matrix. If y...

Great news! Pinemarten Education will be showcasing SmartRubric at the Bett Exhibition in London! It's a really exciting event, and I would highly recommend a visit if you are in the education sector, regardless of your role. It's so inspiring, and the speakers and exhibitors are wonderful. It's such a privilege to be involved! If you would like to attend, you can register here to attend for free: http://www.bettshow.com Hope to see you there!

Hi all! We've just added some new features, and there are plenty more coming soon. You may now start receiving alerts on your homepage either from us or from other teachers at your school. Soon you will be able to create alerts and link to classes, assessments or students as you will to loop in other members of staff. Ultimately, we would like to show you a feed of relevant information about your students and classes whenever you log in. This is the first (baby) step towards that! Additionally, we've made some features available to department leads and school administrators. Now you can transfer responsibility for an assessment from one teacher to another (useful in case of temporary illness), or add additional teachers to a class. This is all in preparation for the release of our biggest round of features between now and the full product launch in January. We are adding moderation  to SmartRubric! This means that you will be able to request moderation for an assessment,...

In order to help you make the most of SmartRubric, we've given you the ability to import and export the rubrics that you (and others!) have made. If you would like to share a rubric: It's easy! All you need to do is make sure you have got your rubric the way you want it (don't forget the grade boundaries!), and click 'export' in the library. The file will automatically be saved in your downloads folder. It will have the file extension .srm, which just means that it's encoded and can only be opened by SmartRubric. You can share .srm files by email, post them online or share them on a memory stick. If you would like to import a rubric: If someone has sent you an .srm file or you found one online that you would like to use, it's easy to import it into SmartRubric. From anywhere in SmartRubric, just go to 'Rubrics' in the main menu and select 'Import'. When the modal pops up, click 'select' and find the file you wis...