Thank you Career-Technical teachers, administrators and stakeholders that attended to WebXam Updates session at Ohio ACTE on July 26. We appreciate the opportunity to talk with you about the changes coming to WebXam for the coming year as well as to look back at last year.
The presentation slides may be downloaded here.
WebXam now supports allowing administrators to manage students, teachers and other administrators based on programs. WebXam also supports a custom role for District Testing Coordinators (DTCs). A district should have at least one DTC and may have as many as is needed. An administrator may serve as a DTC for many districts.
Programs have been initially populated using testing data from last school year, but will need updated by administrators and DTCs.
View documentation about programs in our revamped WebXam Documentation
Slides from upcoming presentations will be added soon.
If you need support or guidance, please contact WebXam Support
All field tests in the T9 and TA Transportation Pathways have been rescored. Final scores are available via WebXam Reports and new performance standards are set and available on the WebXam About the Tests Page.
Graduating students who have taken a field-tested assessment in the current academic year may retake the finalized assessment once between 5/8/2023 and 6/2/2023 if needed to meet graduation requirements. There is no 30-day remediation period for retaking field tests as part of this policy.
Please see the Ohio Department of Education’s Career Technical Education Career Tech Assessment System website for the full retake policy
The testing screen students see while being assessed is changing, a view of the new interface is available here.
The highlighted areas of the screen are as follows:
WebXam is updating the testing screen to improve the reliability, responsiveness and usability of the tests for students.
Starting this year, students will no longer use passwords to access tests in WebXam. Instead, Access Codes will be generated when test sessions are activated that will work only for that test session. Access Codes are 6-character letter number combinations.
Access Codes can be downloaded at the end of the test activation process as a CSV or as a PDF. They are also available via the Activations Report.
If a student is taking multiple tests on the same day, the Access Code will be the same for each test.
Access Codes are:
WebXam is changing activation for the following reasons:
The Center on Education and Training for Employment in collaboration with the Ohio Department of Education and Department of Higher Education, launched an end of test student acknowledgement survey, enhancing a students’ ability to access college transfer credit earned through one of Ohio’s Career-Technical Assurance Guides (CTAGs). The student survey appears at the completion of each WebXam test a student takes associated with one of Ohio’s Career-Technical Assurance Guides (CTAGs).
The student survey allows students, who are proficient on the taken test, to grant permission to Ohio’s public colleges or universities to post transfer credit earned through meeting the requirements of the associated Career-Technical Assurance Guide (CTAG). The student survey enhancement address needs for a uniform method of communication between Ohio’s secondary students and Ohio’s public colleges and universities to simplify awarding credit through career-technical credit transfer (CT²).
For more information about Career-Technical Assurance Guides (CTAGs), please visit the Ohio Department of Higher Education Career-Technical Articulation and Transfer Page.
In response to the ongoing challenges schools have faced due to COVID-19, the Ohio General Assembly passed House Bill 67 that allows juniors and seniors to use course grades in place of or in addition to test scores for the 2020-2021 school year to meet graduation requirements.
Please review the linked newsletter to learn more.
In response to the ongoing challenges schools face due to COVID-19, the Ohio General Assembly passed an amended version of House Bill 67. HB 67 includes language that allows juniors and seniors to use course grades in place of or in addition to test scores for the 2020-2021 school year to meet graduation requirements. Please review the policy documentation on ODE’s Career-Technical Education Assessment System webpage.
Once details are finalized WebXam will announce and provide data submission templates and grade submission deadlines for participating school districts. School districts must provide the required data during the allowed timeframe to ensure proper reporting. There will be no additional windows for reporting grades.
End-of-course assessments are a way to assess technical knowledge and skill attainment by the students. Teachers can analyze end-of-course assessment data to identify student performance gaps. After identification of student learning gaps, teachers can provide interventions and remediation to students to close the performance gaps. Documentation of technical attainment can allow teachers to better prepare, ultimately improving teacher effectiveness, which is beneficial to the student, the teacher, local programs, and to Ohio business and industry. Schools should post-test juniors and seniors first, and if the grade substitution is advantageous for the student for the 2020-2021 school year, districts may use the grade substitution option.
The Ohio Department of Education and WebXam are pleased to announce that WebXam tests now may be retaken in the same school year by graduating students after allowing for additional instruction time. This change enhances opportunities for students to demonstrate technical skills attainment for the purpose of graduation and report cards. The policy for WebXam same-year retakes includes:
Additional information regarding WebXam can be found on the Career-Technical Education Assessment webpage or contact Matt Winkle.
COVID-19 has changed the way we conduct our daily lives, from shopping to work to education, including state testing of 150,000 students attending Ohio’s career-technical education centers.
CETE’s long-standing work with the Ohio Department of Education’s Office of Career-Technical Education (ODE-CTE), dating back to the 1980s, includes developing tests and administering them to students; first using paper assessments, and then through a sophisticated, online system. Usually, as schools complete end-of-course testing, those test scores are downloaded from WebXamTM and then provided to the local districts for reporting back to the state Education Management Information System (EMIS) system. This process was interrupted by the pandemic and the subsequent stay-in-place order.
Social distancing prevented students from attending classes in-person and completing end-of-course testing. Career-technical education (CTE) courses require hands-on experiences, such as automotive repair or construction trades. With the dangers of the pandemic and shelter-in-place orders, the schools moved to online instruction and closed their facilities, which required innovation for reporting testing and grades.
Leah Amstutz heads ODE-CTE as the State Director. After deliberations with CETE staff and with their partners at the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE), the office announced the following updates for 2020. Course grades from local districts would be reported to WebXam™ and used instead of test scores for college credit where available and graduation in the coming years. For each course completed, students will have a letter grade or pass/fail indication. Student grades will be converted to percentages, using historical data maintained by CETE and EMIS. This process will allow for reporting at state and federal levels to operate similarly to how it has in years past. In collaboration with ODE/ODHE and EMIS, the IT group of the CETE assessment program worked quickly to set up this reporting feature through WebXamTM, allowing teachers and districts to upload student grading data. Also, CETE participated in ODE-hosted webinars to facilitate training for those responsible for inputting this data, ensuring that this change occurs smoothly.
Matt Winkle, Associate Director of ODE-CTE, noted that Richard Huggins, Senior Systems Manager at CETE, was a key member of this strategy. Winkle stated, “Richard has been an important part of our presentation team for the WebXamTM alternative option in response to the COVID-19 school building closure. Richard is a true asset to the educational community, as he provides outstanding customer service and technical support to the Office of CTE and our stakeholders.”
Richard Huggins succinctly describes the impact of this endeavor, “In difficult times such as these, it is important that we respond as a community to our shared challenges in the spirit of collaboration. WebXamTM is proud to support all Career-Technical students, teachers, administrators and stakeholders in the state of Ohio by leveraging the strengths of our platform to meet the challenges we are faced with today and in the future.”
When things are uncertain and ever-changing, the quick thinking and flexibility of both CETE and ODE have allowed for collaboration that benefits both students and teachers. The result is also the strengthening of the long-term cooperation between ODE and CETE.
For more information, please visit the ODE website.
