November 25th, 2019

Record Data Collection For This Decathlon

Earlier this year GradeCam played a part in scoring the assessments for the Academic Junior High Decathlon, declaring the winners in record time! Each year over 100 schools compete in the decathlon for students in grades 6-8 throughout the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

 

The Decathlon Grading Team

True to the competition’s name, there are ten events. Two are collaborative team efforts – a logic quiz with 20 problems, and a quiz with 50 multiple choice questions on five broad academic themes.

The remaining eight events test individual knowledge of Roman Catholic doctrine, English, Literature, Science, Mathematics, Current Events, Social Studies, and Fine Arts (Art and Music). Awards are given for individual and team performance. The winning school team from each geographic diocese goes on to compete in a state championship.

 

Samatha headshotWe ran into Samantha Sanchez, a 6th-grade teacher at St. Francis Xavier School in Burbank, California, at this year’s International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference. She was on the 6-person team in charge of grading all those assessments.

Samantha told us they used GradeCam to score assessments for 9 of the events (all but the long-from logic questions). Previously they used Scantron sheets.

 

“The ease of GradeCam was the highlight of the day!”

Hundreds of Assessments Scored Before Lunch

When we asked what made this year’s experience so much more enjoyable, she gave several reasons:

 

Save the cost of Scantron sheets: The organizers didn’t have to factor the cost of the Scantron sheets into the event budget.

 

Data tabulated in an instant: Previously, the Scantron sheets would provide a score but the scores have to be hand-tallied to declare a winner. Using GradeCam, the scores were instantly gathered electronically. Then, they could be sorted and viewed using GradeCam’s reporting features.

 

Ease of use: The GradeCam forms were printed with the name of the assessment and individual school/student. This alleviated many previous issues with assessments not being filled out correctly or getting mixed in with other forms.

And, Samantha says, GradeCam forms are easier to fill out because the circles can be made larger and the format can be customized to exactly what’s needed for that assessment.

 

Human error wasn’t such a factor any more: The team of teachers scoring the assessments didn’t have to worry about miscalculating or entering scores. That was all handled automatically by GradeCam.

They didn’t even have to make sure the stacks of forms were separated. With GradeCam, it doesn’t matter what order you scan them in, the software will automatically add the score to the correct assessment!

Samantha says the GradeCam form scoring was done before lunchtime so they could focus on completing the logic assessments. They were able to announce the results several hours earlier than usual!

“This is the first year I was able to each lunch!”

Get GradeCam Today!

Maybe you’re not running a decathlon with hundreds of assessments to scan, but we bet you have a few you’d like to be scored instantly. Get started with your 60-day free trial today!