Test-Taker Libraries

How you organize your test-takers in TAO’s test-taker libraries is up to you, of course, and preferences may vary from institution to institution. Where student data is managed over a whole group of institutions, as it is for high schools in the US, it is common practice to organize test-takers hierarchically for each state: by district, then school, and then classroom. Some independent institutions, such as universities, prefer a flat classroom structure.

The image below shows an instance of a flat classroom structure, with a Test-taker class called Middlesbrough High School Year 9 - the one which was introduced in the lesson on Additional Information for test-takers above. There are four students in the class.

Structuring your test-taker libraries according to classroom (rather than by subject or level) ensures that each student is registered only once in TAO. However, whether your test-taker library has a flat or a hierarchical structure, the chances are that there won’t be a 1-to-1 mapping between your classroom structure and your assessment structure. In other words, it is likely to be the case that not all students in one classroom (and therefore in one folder in your test-taker library) will be sitting exactly the same assessments. Even if - in lower age groups, for example - all students are taking the same subjects, there may be different assessments for different levels within the same subject.

For this reason, your test-takers need to be organized along a second axis before they can sit for assessments: a categorization that allows them to take the correct assessments.