Msa form auto entry function
- 1. MSA Form Auto Entry Function Within the ScanTracks Daily Tracking Solution, we have added a new routine for the 2014 MSA administration that we hope will save School Test Coordinators (STCs) an incredible amount of time as they are assigning students to test groups. In the past, we have often been asked by our users why the Daily Tracking Solution can’t automatically enter the Form information for the test booklets as users are assigning test booklets to their testing groups. The answer to that question is simple: The security barcodes are printed by the test vendor onto the test booklets as serial numbers. There is no intelligence built into those security barcodes that would allow us to determine the Form. However, we have conducted some research from last year’s administration of the MSA that leads us to believe that there is a high degree of predictability to the Form based on the 9th byte of the security barcode. We found that if the 9th byte of the security barcode was an odd number, the Form was A for Math and 1 for Reading. If the 9th byte was an even number, the Form was B for Math and 2 for Reading. The predictability from last year was determined to be 99.68 percent accurate. We contacted the test vendor to seek information regarding the likelihood that the serial barcodes would follow this same pattern again this year, but we were told the process was “totally random” and that there was no guarantee that the pattern would be repeated this year. So unfortunately, it may indeed be the case this year that our MSA Form Auto Entry function will not work properly. If we determine through feedback from our users that the Auto Entry function is not behaving as expected, we will disable the function at the school system and/or statewide level. The Auto Entry function is easy to turn “On”. Please see the 3 images below: Clicking on the button above will toggle the function as follows: Off ---> On ---> Auto If the function is set to “Off”, the software will not ask the user to enter the Form
- 2. while assigning students to test groups. If the function is set to “On”, the software will ask the user to manually enter the Form while assigning students to test groups. If the function is set to “Auto”, the software will automatically enter the Form based on the algorithm referenced above. If the user chooses to use the “Auto Entry” function, the software will alert that the routine is not 100% accurate, and the user must agree to review the Form information for accuracy. See below: The software is written such that if the Auto Entry returns an incorrect value, the user will be able to edit the form by simply clicking on the student record, entering the correct form, and clicking OK. Users can simply “mouse over” the security barcode listed under the column “Booklet ID”, and a flyout window will display the Form entered as a result of using the Auto Entry function. See below:
- 3. If the function does not behave properly, we will disable the feature through our servers. The disabling will take effect the next time a school checks into our servers for any purpose. See below: This feature will not work at all for MSA Science; our research does not support the feature for Science because there are 10 forms. If the Auto Entry function does not behave as anticipated, please accept our apologies and understand that we were simply trying to help.