Cambium Assessment
Cambium Assessment is a bundle of programs that is our assessment system. Depending upon your duties, you may not need all but will need some of those programs.
TIDE - Test Information Distribution Engine
TA - Test Administration for Interim and Operational Testing
DEI - Data Entry Interface
LMS - Learning Management System
CRS - Centralized Reporting System
TFAR - Texas Formative Assessment Resources
TIDE
Test Information Distribution Engine
TIDE is most commonly used by testing cooridinators. This is how we enter users and set their attributes for test taking. This is also where we create rosters so that assessments can be assigned and results can be seen by those who need to see them. Once a students accommodations for STAAR, Interim, TELPAS, TTAP, and TFAR assessments are all set here.
TA
Test Administration for Interim and Operational Testing
Whether it is a STAAR, Interim, TELPAS, TTAP, or TFAR assessment, TA is where it is scheduled. Though it is more commonly used by campus testing coordinators, classroom teachers can create their own assessments and use the TA system. At this time, our district utilized the "Schedule Unproctored Sessions" but there are two other options available.
DEI
Data Entry Interface
DEI is used to enter data from paper assessments. This includes holistic assessments and observable behavior ratings for TELPAS. assessments. If you are asked to transcribe an assessment, you will need to be familiar with DEI before testing day. A short training is available in the LMS. Though it looks similar to the kiosked testing app, this is not the place for students to take assessments.
LMS
Learning Management System
The LMS will be used by all staff member. It has been redesigned (released in January 2023) and new learning opportunities will continually be added.
If you would like to learn more about any of the Cambium Assessment programs, this is a great place to start. Most trainings are very short and provide resources that you can download and save for your reference.
Learning opportunities will be tracked by campus, district, and state for compliance purposes.
CRS
Centralized Reporting System
This is the program that provides the results for all Cambium assessments including STAAR, Interim, TELPAS, TTAP, and TFAR. Each staff member can only see the student data assigned to them via students rosters in TIDE.
All reports are available to print, but processing is slow. Once they are ready, you will find any report you requested in your Inbox located in the top right.
TFAR
Texas Formative Assessment Resources
TFAR is where I spend most of my time. This is where I can create items and tests. Any test (assessment) created in TFAR must be scheduled through TA, then the results will be available in CRS. All new STAAR items types are available in TFAR.
Stimulus - This allows you to create a stimulus (reading passage, graphic, etc.) that several questions can be linked.
Multiple Choice/Select - You can create an item with one correct choice or multiple correct choices. When scoring these item types, you choose the value of each choice option. You can assign partial credit.
Hot Text - This item type allows the student to select text in the passage as an answer. This is great option for Multi-Part problems when they need to justify the text that provided their answer choice in the first part.
Hot Spot - This item type allows you to place "spots" on a graphic that students can then choose for their answer. This works great for maps or graphs.
Edit Task Inline Choice - In this question, you can embed text options in a drop down. The student chooses the best option to complete the statement. The best part is that they can read the completed sentence with their chosen text to check for accuracy.
Edit Task - In this question type, you intentionally place text in a sentence that needs to be edited. The students selects the highlight text, a place space opens up for them to edit the text. This must be manually scored.
Simple Text Entry - This is the open ended response type. This must be manually scored.
Embedded Text Entry - This item type allows you to embed blank spaces in the text for the students to fill in. This must be manually scored.
Text Drag and Drop - This item type is like embedded text entry with a word bank. You insert the locations for the text (you can have one or multiple) and provide text options that can be dragged into those locations.
Image Drag and Drop - This item allows you to drag and drop onto an image. This is great for maps, graphs, and tables. You select the areas on the image that you want available for the drops.
Table Match - This item provides a table that is completed through "clicking" or selection. You can determine how many selections are allowed per row or column or leave it open.
Equation Response - This item provides the student with an equation editor for their answer. You can choose from numeric, basic, intermediate, algebra, and advanced.
Multi-part - This allows you to group questions together. This works great if they need to justify an answer with text evidence or selection from image/graph.