The complex nature of the job description of teachers makes their work highly demanding and tiring. This is why most educational institutions seek the services of teaching assistants to help reduce the burden so that productivity can be optimised.
The human representation as a teaching assistant constitutes additional overhead costs on management. Despite this investment, human teaching assistants record high rate of errors in their duties, especially in the areas of creating test scripts, marking and grading of exam scores.
The teacher’s responsibilities in creating test scripts, asking students to take the test and finally marking the scripts to grade students can be time-consuming. Unnecessary time is spent on manual administrative duties that could be used more productively and enable teachers to focus more of their valuable time on the teaching part.
The KYOCERA HyPAS Teaching Assistant software agent relieves teachers of these burdens by ensuring that test script making, marking and grading are done in no time, using a Multi-function Printer (MFP). That is to say, the digital Teaching Assistant software transforms MFPs into an on-demand test creating, grading and analysis virtual assistant.. It also takes away the financial burden of having to hire a human teaching assistant to do this job. It affords teachers the opportunity to concentrate more on students and lesson plans, than wasting time on the error-prone manual marking of student test scripts.
The Efficiency of KYOCERA HyPAS Teaching Assistant
The Teaching Assistant is an advanced software application specially designed for automated printing of multiple-choice test questions, using bubble sheet forms.
Not only does the software print out bubble test and answer scripts, it also grades the completed bubble sheets of students using the answer sheets provided, and provides a graphical representation of class performance data.
KYOCERA Teaching Assistant provides a platform for teachers to print out individualised test sheets of each student which contains overall grade. The software in printing the test sheets also ensures that every incorrect answer is circled with the correct answer next to it.
How KYOCERA Teaching Assistant Works
How the Teaching Assistant does its job in ensuring fast, reliable and efficient running of tests and test results can simply be explained in two ways; (1) Creating an Exam and (2) Automated Test Grading.
Creating an Exam
The software transforms MFPs into an on-demand test creating, grading and analysis unit.
When a teacher wants to create a multiple-choice test sheet, the Teaching Assistant prints blank test sheets for each student. In this case, the blank test sheets are handed to the students at the start of the test. Test questions could be posted on a board or handed to the students along with the test sheet.
Students write their names and fill out their ID number in the space provided. Students answer each question by shading the corresponding bubble on the test sheet. After completing the test sheet, they return their marked test sheets back to the teacher.
Automated Test Grading
The software allows the teacher to fill out the correct answers for each question on a designated “answer key” page, which is also printed out along with blank sheets.
When everything is set, the teacher scans all the test sheets along with the answer key page at the MFP into KYOCERA Teaching Assistant.
Teaching Assistant scores each student’s test and prepares a report of the actual results for each student. The report can be
● Printed at the MFP in a summary or detailed format
● Sent to the teacher as a PDF in an email attachment
● Saved to a USB flash drive as a PDF file.
Benefits of KYOCERA Teaching Assistant
● It simplifies the task of printing, collecting and analysing test results for teachers, while ensuring accuracy and reducing the amount of time spent in grading students.
● Institutions can maximise efficiency through saving valuable time for teachers to concentrate more on their students and planning lessons.
● Institutions can make huge savings in eliminating the need to order expensive pre-printed bubble sheets and by not requiring any network resources.