In addition STATIS© features a calender interface. This calender helps teachers plan the delivery of their units. The calender also will provide color coded (Green-red) tiles that indicate immediately to teachers where students have been successful.

The STATIS© calender permits teachers to easily adjust the length of time required for each lesson – the system will make all of the necessary adjustments!  Imagine that…STATIS© provides the teacher with a easy to use visual tool to keep them focused on their class performance.  Talk to us – we will be happy to provide additional details.

Modern classroom software has to handle more types of information than ever.  For example, a single test question should link together all of these bits of information:

• State Standards Alignment
• Bloom’s Taxonomy Level
• Lesson Plan Alignment (for each instructor or school)
• Emerging Standards Alignment (Common Core)
• Question Source
• Special Restrictions (securing high-stakes tests)
• Supplemental Reading Material
• How answers should be given (multiple-choice, free-response, short-answer, numeric)
• Feedback for wrong (or correct) answers
• Grading criteria; Weight

Also, consider that after putting all of this data together, the test may be delivered in any of several formats: online; paper; Scantron; or using Student Response Systems (SRS).

At Teacher Resources, Inc., this is the problem we faced when laying out the framework for our STATIS Learning Management and Assessment software.  And in the end, we designed a comprehensive, intuitive, and blazing-fast system that handled all of the data we could throw at it, and then some.  But we weren’t out of the water yet.  We still needed a way to load all of this information into our database!

Our Solution

The STATIS Document Manager showing an inventory of lesson plans and student review sheets in Civics. This screen also shows the size of each document, if it’s in draft, review, or approved status, and what state standards it’s linked to, if any. From here the user can view the full document, or edit it.

As Aesop teaches us, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” and this lead challenge led us to develop a tool that handled all of these variables.  Building it from the ground-up we were able to integrate each and every variable in the way that made the most sense.  And, planning for the future, we made this Database Builder only loosely-coupled to our flagship product – STATIS.  In other words, while the editor is designed for and works beautifully with STATIS, it also works with most other products that can import and export data, not to mention spreadsheets and CSV files.

Quite by accident, our “internal” editing tool began attracting public interest, and now we’re proud to offer it to the teaching community, regardless of rather or not they choose to use it with STATIS (though we have an opinion on that too!).

Product Overview

The STATIS Database Builder (SDB) is a digital repository for classroom resources.  It starts with a state-of-the art test and question builder and an easy-to-use document editor.

On top of that it includes tools to manage alignment with teaching units and lesson plans, state standards, and common standards, of each and every bit of content in the system, down to individual paragraphs of lesson plans and student worksheets if desired.

Finally, it includes workflow management tools to track revisions and the history of the database, assign different levels of access to different users, and implement a review-and-approve process.

SDB is independent of the various testing and learning management systems in use today.  It can output data to any system with a compatible interface.  With SDB, you have a common, secure area to build your school’s database that is open, future-proof, and reliable.

Connection to Existing School Systems

STATI S is designed to work with existing Student Information Systems.  Additionally, it’s open philosophy dictates that it’s data should be made available to any testing system that wishes to use it.  To that end, it can export it’s data in a variety of formats.  Data can also be bulk-loaded on a case-by-case basis:

SDB and the STATIS Software Suite

Core Features

The document editor uses the familiar graphical interface from popular office applications. This screen also shows the actions available to a user, depending on their level of access: save in drafts; submit for review and publishing; show changes (compared to the last released version of the document); delete draft; publish immediately.

Test and Question Builder

• Build a re-usable database of questions for your school system
• Question Types: free-response, short-answer, true/false, multiple choices
• Include reading prompts with questions
• Add responses explaining what the student did wrong for incorrect answers, or encouragement after correct answers
• Each question can be aligned to a state standard objective
• Questions can go through a review process before being committed to the active database
• Questions, Tests, or both, can be exported to classroom software – depending on its capabilities

Lesson and Handout Builder

• Edit worksheets and lesson plans using a familiar, graphical document editor
• Include graphics and charts to add interest
• All documents can go through a review process before being committed to the active database
• Documents are organized by lesson sequence, and document type
• Pre-loaded  documents can be customized to the school’s need

Student Response Systems

Student Response Systems, frequently referred to as “clickers,” keep students attention at the front of the room, encourage interactivity, and deliver instant results and feedback.  These systems aren’t limited to testing, but are also useful in voting, taking attendance, and in polling the classroom.

STATIS supports clickers for daily, end-of-unit, benchmark, and on-demand tests.  Questions are displayed to the classroom through an overhead projector or monitor, and students respond with their clickers.  Indicators on-screen show when a button has been pressed, and which students have yet to respond.  STATIS is unique is support most popular brands of clickers, even those of our competitors.

Scantron Forms

Scantron forms blend automatic grading with open-design, printed and photocopied tests.  While limiting answer types to true/false and multiple choice, they are efficient, well-tested, and reliable.

STATIS supports Scantron Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) machines directly: tests with multiple-choice and true/false questions are printed, photocopied, and distributed to students, along with their Scantron response sheets.  Each test also contains a unique ID number, which the students bubble in on their response sheets. After completing the test, the response sheets are scanned, and STATIS’s Scantron Connector application transmits the results from a computer connected to the scanner, to our central database.  Grades and reports are available instantly.

Online Testing

Online, web-based tests have many advantages: they can be done anywhere with an internet connection; each student works at their own pace; they offer a more personalized experience with supplemental reading material and interactive feedback on-screen.  They also produce the absolute lowest possible workload for the teacher – there are no papers to copy, no forms to scan, and no tests to grade by hand.  They do require that students be at a computer with an Internet connection, either at the school or at home.

Feature Matrix

When you purchase the STATIS system for your organization, all of these testing methods are included, but each has particular strengths.   All of these testing methods use the same question and test database, within practical limits (free-response questions don’t work well with Scantron forms, for example).  This table shows when each method is appropriate to use:

We’re always striving to make STATIS more efficient for our teachers.  If you think there’s a better way of delivering tests, let us know!