- Accessing the Data Explorer
- Security and privacy
- Formatting your files for upload
- Problems with uploading your files
- Problems with mapping your files
- Modifying data you’ve already uploaded
- Problems with visualizing your data
Accessing the Data Explorer
Security and privacy
For standard multiple-choice assessments like the FCI, FMCE, BEMA, or CSEM, responses should be in the form A,B,C,... or 1,2,3,... or 0,1,2,... For agree/disagree assessments like the CLASS or MPEX, responses should be in the form A,B,C,... or 1,2,3,... or strongly agree, agree,... or sa, a,...
In the future, we may add better handling of files without header rows, but for now, we expect a header row with column headings. If your file doesn't have a header row, we treat the first row of student data as a header row and do not include that student data in our analysis. If the row above the black line on the column mapping page looks like student data, please cancel your upload, add a header row to your file, and start over.
If you give us only one form of student identifier, such as student ID or name, we will not be able to match students if this identifier is not exactly the same in both the pre-test and post-test file. However, if you give us both student names and IDs, we will use both, so that if the IDs don’t match but the names do (or vice versa), we will still be able to match your students. Users who have previously matched their students by hand find that, if they upload their original unmatched data to the Data Explorer, we can match almost as many students as they did with a lot of painstaking work.
Problems with uploading your files
Problems with mapping your files
Modifying data you’ve already uploaded
Click on “Your Data” at the top of the page. Scroll down and open “Classes”, “Courses”, “Instructors”, or “Institutions” and click on the edit icon next to the one you want to edit. You can edit the name of any class, course, instructor, or institution, or any of the details about it.
Problems with visualizing your data
Some reasons this might be happening:
- You didn't select the appropriate answer format. If your file has answer choices coded as numbers, we guess whether the answer format is ABCDE = 01234 or ABCDE = 12345. If we guessed wrong, and you didn't correct us, your students' scores will be a lot lower than they should be. To check which answer format we guessed (and change it if you need to), click on "Your data" and then select "View Summary" from the action menu for the appropriate dataset.
- You are using a different formula for normalized gain than we are. Normalized gain can be calculated using the average of gains for each student or the gain of average scores for the class. We use the former. If you use the latter, your gains might differ from ours by 5-10%, especially if you have a small class. For students who scored lower on the post-test than the pre-test, we use the normalized change rather than the normalized gain. Learn more about how we calculate normalized gain and normalized change.
- You are using a different formula for score than we are. Some assessments have special scoring schemes that are more complicated than just adding up the number of correct responses. To see how we calculate the score for a particular assessment, find the assessment in our assessment list, click on the "Resources" tab, and download the implementation guide.
- We are excluding students you included in your calculations. We calculate normalized gain only for matched students. We exclude students who answered fewer than 2/3 of the questions on the assessment or who incorrectly answered CLASS question 31 (select "agree" if you are paying attention). To check how many students we matched and excluded, click on "Your data" and then select "View Summary" from the action menu for the appropriate dataset.
- If you've checked all these things and your calculations still don't match ours, please contact us so we can help you figure out why.
We occasionally encounter errors while drawing the visualization. This can sometimes be fixed by refreshing the page or closing and reopening the browser. If the error persists, please
contact us so we can help. If you do
not encounter an error message but your visualization does not load completely, you may be using an incompatible browser. For the visualization section of the Data Explorer, we only support up-to-date versions of Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and Safari.