New updates to our e-portfolio software from Smart Assessor

We have some great new enhancements to the Smart Assessor e-portfolio software being updated this weekend, including a new employer dashboard where your employers can log into Smart Assessor and review their employee's proogress. We've also helped ensure you comply with the SFA 12 week review guidance by alerting you if when learners do not have reviews scheduled in the last 8 weeks or the following 4 weeks. Click the title above to read the full article for the full list of updates.
1. Learner mapping evidence
From Monday we have changed the colour of ticks in the map evidence area to differentiate whether a learner mapped the evidence or the assessor. If the assessor has done the mapping the ticks stay the same colour as they are currently : orange. If the learner has done the mapping then the ticks will be grey. Assessors can re-tick grey ticks to show they approve and the ticks will change to orange.

Assessors can take off the learners mappings by removing the grey ticks. Learners cannot change any orange ticks which is the assessors mappings.

2. Editing the Timesheet
From Monday you will be able to make corrections to the timesheet to edit the information.

The other new features are outlined in the attached workbook, we have now an employer log in, to summarise the updates include:-

3. Emails and Email Alerts
We have now reduced the emails Assessors receive from Smart Assessor to one summary email a day, some of you used to receive up to 8 an hour if your learners were uploading lots of evidence! You will now only receive a daily email with a summary of all your learners activity for that day in it, if there is no activity you will not receive an email.

4. Learner Home Page
The initial screen the learners see when they login for the first time has now changed; they will either be taken straight to their Learner Dashboard if they are only doing one course or to the Overall Progress Screen if they are doing the framework or more than one course.

5. Formal Review Sessions
When you book a session for your learner you can now chose general review, induction or Formal Review. We’ve also introduced a flag on your assessor dashboard to let you know if you are not complying with the 12 week Formal Review guidance and you have any learners who haven’t had a formal review in the last 8 weeks and don’t have one schedule for the next 4 weeks.

6. Training & Assessment Plan
You can now upload documents to the learner’s training and assessment plan, it could be that you want to upload your formal review feedback – either scanned in with the learner’s signature or a PDF and you leave them an action to confirm its authentic and that they accept it which will save you scanning them in. SFA guidance 74 does state that they do accept electronic signatures.

We’ve also increased the size of the formative and summative session notes boxes and you can now use any characters in here, I know that some of you were having problems using comma’s and apostrophe’s.

7. Assessor dashboard
We’ve made a few minor changes to the assessor dashboard, if your learner has a learning difficulty identified in their details you will now see their name in bold on the dashboard, in the session column you will see the total number of sessions booked and which session this is (i.e. session 3 of 10) and the last one is if you are missing a formal review you will get a red box around the session box. Have a look at the notes attached for screen images of what these will look like.

8. Employer log in
You can now give your employer clients a log into Smart Assessor and they will be able to see the progress of their learners. They can’t make any changes to see the detail of the portfolio but they can see who their assessor is and their employee’s progress through the framework.

9. Session History Data
You can now export all session data to excel, useful for auditing purposes.

For more information visit our web site

E-PORTFOLIO SOFTWARE MARKETING FROM SMART ASSESSOR

The internet has become a crucial marketing tool for start up companies; it’s low cost and provides traction in the market place very quickly – if it’s done correctly.

If your internet marketing isn’t managed then it becomes time consuming and very frustrating, often resulting in you giving up and paying for online advertising with Google’s pay per click which can burn your limited budget within a few hours.

The key to an effective internet campaign is to understand what phrases people you want to attract to your web site will enter into the search engines.  Smart Assessor has launched a new e-portfolio software solution which is targeting training providers who are delivering work based learning.  When we searched for our local college of further education by their name they were returned right at the top of the results, but if I was a local employer looking for an apprentice would I think of my local college or would I Google something like “looking for an apprentice in (location)” Entering this into the search engine specifying the location of the college as the location in the phrase they were nowhere to be seen on the first 3 pages,  finally getting a mention on page 5.

How many of us scroll through 5 pages of the search returns to find what we are looking for? Not many!

Google can help you understand what phrases are entered into their search engine with the external keyword tool, this tool will show you how many people have searched for a specific phrase and display a 12 month search pattern too.

Once you have revealed which phrases you would like your web site to be returned against then you need to go about create lots of content around that phrase on the web.  Make sure the content of your web site is updated regularly too because Google will visit updated pages within your web site more frequently and Google indexes each and every page of your web content not just your home page; make sure you are setting different search phrases for each of your individual pages within your web site.  You need to get these phrases in your title tags, headings and the content of your web pages themselves.  

Consider getting content published on the web outside of your own web site too. Articles are a great way of getting your phrases indexed and there are lots of web sites that accept article submissions without charging.

Ultimately what you are trying to achieve is to create lots of ‘noise’ on the web by distributing your content containing your key phrases as widely as possible, when someone you are trying to target enters that phrase into Google you don’t just want to get returned in the number 1 spot but also the next 20 search returns too.  It’s easy to do and will cost you absolutely nothing except an hour or two of your time.

That’s one of the methods we have used at Smart Assessor to create a lot of noise and enthusiasm for our new e-portfolio software in just a few short weeks.  For more hints on web marketing or to find out more about Smart Assessor visit our web site www.smartassessor.com

NEW PRODUCT LAUNCH – QCF e-portfolio software - Smart Assessor

Government funded Training providers can balance cost cutting with quality training delivery!

Smart Assessor, a newly formed entrepreneurial small business, has launched a new solution for Training Providers to help them care more for their apprentices.

Whilst there is a focus from Government on the training of apprentices there is also pressure on training providers to deliver more, for less money.  The recent change of awarding contracts only to larger training providers has meant that the smaller niche training providers now have to pay a management fee to their larger contract holder.  This reduces the budget they have left to spend on delivering the apprenticeship framework.

Assessors are under pressure manage more learners and complete them in less time.  In a recent survey 84% of assessors said that they had to take work home with them in the evening to stay on top of their workload and that this impacted on the quality of their family life.

Assessors felt that they couldn’t let their learners down; the reason they had chosen this career was because they had a passion for helping young people achieve their potential which is at the heart of the apprenticeship programme.

Smart Assessor has researched how assessors spend their time and have identified an area of their working practice that could be easily changed, significantly reducing the cost of delivering the apprenticeship framework and could also help the assessor interact more with their apprentices. A win-win solution.

Research has indicated that assessors are spending on average 5 hours a week travelling to see their apprentices in the workplace; this is completely unproductive time for assessors and costs their training provider at least £4,000 a year for each assessor in lost time and travel expenses.

Smart Assessor have developed a new QCF e-portfolio software that has integrated web training and assessment rooms to make life easier for assessors and better for their apprentices whilst reducing the cost of delivery for training providers.

Assessors can meet with their apprentices ‘virtually’ using Smart Rooms where they can record questions and answers, learner observations whilst reviewing and mapping evidence together in the e-portfolio really helping the apprentice get involved in their own learning.

For more information on this innovative new e-portfolio contact Smart Assessor through their web site http://www.smartassessor.com/