It is common practice for many institutions to continually make adjustments or tweaks to their respective assessment practices. With this in mind, Outcomes was created to provide a degree of flexibility when it comes to adjusting templates and fields across an institution and between academic years. As such, this allows for an institution to update how it makes use of it's Outcomes site. Outlined below are the steps and suggestions on creating and changing templates within Outcomes.
Key Takeaways:
- Templates are adjusted within a single academic year.
- Templates can only be adjusted to a certain degree once data has been entered.
- Inheritance is used for template field settings.
- Templates fields can be enabled/disabled for each level within an organizational tree.
The Outcomes site is made up of three template types: outcome, assessment and results.These three templates are customizable to a degree for each level of the organizational chart. Each template includes a number of fields that can be enabled, disabled or required for at varying levels of the organizational tree. Certain fields within each template are labeled with a red asterisk which denotes a “system field”. System fields are required within Outcomes and cannot be disabled. These fields represent the minimum amount of information needed for the tool to function.
At any given time you can hide, show or make a field required, regardless if data has been submitted using a template. The same applies for making changes to field display names and instructions. It is important to note that if a field is enabled after users have already submitted their assessments, the site administrator will need to notify users that an additional field has been enabled and users may now enter data within the given field. The same applies for disabling a field as well. If data has already been collected for a given field and it is turned off, the site administrator will need to notify users this has taken place.
It is for this reason we advise campuses to keep template changes to a minimum during a given academic year. Doing so will help avoid confusion among an institution's users. Making use of the Sitewide Maintenance function can be applied if changes are planned and you would like to prevent users from accessing the site and entering information before a template is ready.
Steps to Edit a Template(s) or a Field(s):
- A Site Administrator should navigate to "Settings".
- Choose which template (learning outcome, assessment or results) you would like to make adjustments to, ensure you have the correct academic year chosen.
- In order to customize the "Display" name and/or "Instructions" for each field you have chosen to enable, click on the blue "Edit Fields" button located to the right of the screen.
- Once you have customized your template click the blue “Save” button located on the bottom of the form.
- Navigate to the organizational level of your institution's tree that you would like to enable or disable any fields for a given template (remembering some are required to be displayed by the system) and simply check or uncheck the field.
- Check “Required” for any fields you would like to require your users fill out before allowing them to save their item.
Template Customization Worksheet
We have provided a worksheet that Campuses can choose to use when discussing template customization.
The worksheet works as a fillable form that you can use during discussions on how to customize templates. Campuses can save information when entered in the active fields and save edits to that information. Please note, the text boxes will not translate to a printable version. The character limits are built into the text boxes and campuses will not be able to work past the limit.