View item analytics
Introduction
Item analytics tell you how well each question in an activity worked. They show which questions most of your class got right, which ones tripped students up, and which ones failed to separate the students who understood the lesson from those who did not. Use them to find weak or unclear questions, see the topics your students struggle with, and improve your next activity.
GradeChum builds the analysis from your students' checked results and updates it as more results come in or answers are changed.
In this article, we will explore how to view item analytics in GradeChum.
Steps
Note: The analysis is ready once GradeChum has finished checking the activity. For a paper activity, that is after grading is no longer in progress. For an online activity, it is once at least one student's result is graded.
To view item analytics, follow the steps below:
- Open your class, click the activity card in the Activities tab to open View Activity, then click the Analysis tab. A dot on the tab means new results or changed answers have updated the analysis since you last looked at it.
- Under Overall analysis, the Avg. score card shows the class's average score out of the activity's total points. The Discrimination and Difficulty cards count how many questions fall under each rating.
What discrimination and difficulty mean
Discrimination shows how well a question separates the students who did well on the whole activity from those who did not. Hover the info icon beside each rating to see its range:
- Good questions: discrimination above 0.30.
- Fair questions: discrimination from 0.10 to 0.30.
- Poor questions: discrimination below 0.10. Strong and weak students did about the same on the question, so review its wording, its answer key and its choices.
- Cannot calculate: every student got the same score on the question, or every student got it right. There is no difference to measure, so check that the question is not too easy and that its answer key is correct.
Difficulty shows how challenging a question was, based on your students' scores:
- Easy questions: difficulty above 0.80, answered correctly by most students.
- Medium questions: difficulty from 0.30 to 0.80.
- Hard questions: difficulty below 0.30, answered correctly by few students. Check that the question is clear and that the topic was covered.
- Under Analysis per item, each test lists its questions. A row shows the item's Answer type, how many students got it Correct, Incorrect or left it Unanswered, its Avg. score, and its Discrimination and Difficulty ratings with their values.
Correct, Incorrect and Unanswered are only counted for shading, Identification and Answer Key items, with the percentage of graded results beside each count. Other item types, Enumeration among them, show "-" in those columns.
Discuss with students sits above the questions, on every screen size. It opens the walk-through you can project in class. See Discuss with students.
- In the Needs Attention column, Yes marks a question worth reviewing and No means no immediate revision is needed. Hover the info icon beside it to read the suggested action.
- To see one question in detail, click View on its row. View Analysis opens with the item's Overall summary: its Item Performance, its Student responses and a suggested action item. Below the summary is the question itself, and what it shows next depends on the item type:
a. Shading
For items with Multiple Choice or Multiple Answers as the item type:
- Under Answers, each option shows how many students chose it and what percentage of the class that is. The correct option is highlighted in green.
b. Answer Box (without rubrics)
For items with Identification, Answer Key or Enumeration as the item type:
- For Identification and Answer Key items, the Answer Key lists the accepted answers and the item's Strictness level:. Below it, three counts show how many answers matched, near-matched or did not match the accepted answers. Hover each one for what it means.
- For Enumeration items, the List of answers gives each accepted answer a row with how many answers matched it and how many near-matched it. Below the rows, Answers did not match accepted answers counts the answers that matched none of them.
c. Answer Box (with rubrics)
For items with Essay, Problem-solving, Code on paper, Visuals, Rubrics, Answer Key + Rubrics or Key Idea + Rubrics as the item type:
- Under Avg. rubric scores, the item's Grading level: shows first. Each rubric then has a row with its score bands and the class's Avg. Students' Score on it.
- Below the rubrics, Avg. Overall Score shows the class's average score on the whole item.
- To keep a copy for your reports, click Export analysis at the top of View Activity. "Exporting Analysis..." shows while the file is prepared, then the analysis of this class downloads.
- Finally, open the downloaded Excel file. It holds one row per question under its test, with the question's answer type, its correct, incorrect and unanswered counts, its average score out of its points, its discrimination and difficulty ratings, whether it needs attention, and the action to take. A question with no counts reads "N/A", and a sub-item is numbered after its group.
If the analysis is not available yet
Until the analysis is ready, the Analysis tab shows "The results are not available yet." and Export analysis is gray. Hover it to see the same message. Come back once GradeChum has finished checking your students' papers, or once at least one online result is graded.
If the activity's results are locked, the Analysis tab shows the unlock screen instead and Export analysis is hidden. See Activity credits and school licenses to unlock them.
If an item looks different from the rest
- A Bonus badge beside the item number marks a bonus item.
- An Item Group row heads a group of sub-items, and each sub-item has its own row below it.
- Regrading... shows in place of the numbers while an item is being regraded. Its analysis comes back once the regrade finishes.
- A voided item is grayed out with "This item is marked as void." Its View Analysis shows that the item is void instead of its numbers.
If the activity has an activity reviewer
The Analysis tab shows two tabs: Actual activity for the activity your students took, and Activity reviewer for how they did on its reviewer. For an activity with sets, they read, for example, Actual activity (Set A) and Activity reviewer (All Sets). See Release Activity Reviewer.
Note: On a phone, each item is an expandable row, with a red icon on items that need attention, and Export analysis is a download icon at the top of the modal.
And that's how you view item analytics in GradeChum! Next, let's view the activity items.