FSA Planning Conference, October 28th
e-FSA
- lots of upgrades from plnet and awis
- tremendous amount of load testing
- confident problems encountered have been solved
- not certain on some of the reasons for latency issues
e-FSA 2009 Planning
- lower rate of use in the afternoon provincially
- highest at 9am, 11am Pacific
- need to run sample test at all sites again
- Can decide who writes when or allow schools flexibility. Is this a district decision or school by school?
- Sample 2009 is now available on the website… http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/eassessment/fsa.htm
- Longer field testing, Dec 8 – Jan 23rd… unit of test only. Students are randomly assigned units
- Field test can be used to test the system with WTS resources monitoring location (Peter Goldberg at PLNet, Brian Jonkers at Assessment branch)
- FSA Administration is Feb 2-27th.
- Can schedule at will
- reqs
- PC windows 2000, XP, Vista
- Mac OSX 10.3, 10.4, 10.5
- IE 5.5-7, Firefox 3.0.1 on the PC
- Safari 3.1, Firefox 2.0.0.1-2.0.0.14 (firefox 3.0 worked on mac) Mac
- Pop-up blockers must be turned off
- Pre-admin test at web address above should be tested on the machines to be used, quick way to test
- Trusted sites: https://www.awinfosys.com, add this site in web browser on proxy server if problems occur
- Cookies must be enabled… if they are not enabled you will see a “password is incorrect”
- Javascripting must be enabled, blank pages often occur if javascript is not enabled
- Proxy caching must be turned off during exam administration
- If you have difficulties on the login page (blank page after login) hit F5 or Apple+R to refresh the screen and try logging in again.
- Questions can be directed to PRN helpdesk from schools. Technology Services can call A. Willock if we have difficulty at 1-866-558-5339 (not to be used by schools please! Call helpdesk first so we can troubleshoot it first)
- Don’t hit F5 / refresh after they have started. Shouldn’t need to refresh during fsa.
- Caching turned off is critical. If logging into network with same login on mac, make sure they don’t have a home directory (shared chaching)… need to check new ncomputing boxes
Questions for our planning
- local issues?
- Scheduling?
- Timelines?
- Resources?
- Communication?
Ideas
- stagger students writing the e-fsa and the written to prevent cheating, extra space in lab. Don’t need to stagger for load.
- mix the grade 4 and 7 into same lab, multiaged group, 7’s can model and help possibly