The Alta System is a framework of methodologies and computer software. It supports and promotes the use of classroom-based, formative assessment by informing self-assessment, informing teaching, and informing judgements over time.
Alta supports both automated assessment and moderated teacher assessment. All subjects offer opportunities for both types of assessment, and all subjects benefit from the use of both types to enable comprehensive assessment.
The outcomes of both types of assessment are stored in students' records. These records are at the core of the Alta System. They provide information for feedback to students and teachers, and accumulate over time into longitudinal profiles that enable judgements to be made more reliably by ALTA than any once-off summative examinations.
Implicitly, this approach is student-centric - the stored information 'belongs' to the students and moves with them from class to class, school to school. Also implicit in this approach is that the aggregation of students' data for groups, classes, schools, region etc provides the basis for analyses relating to common strengths and weaknesses; gender, age and social issues; and resourcing and policy matters of interest to a variety of stakeholders including parents, teachers and heads, local and central administrators.
Alta also provides classroom management functions - group management,
task assignment, calendar etc - but as these are common features
of Managed Learning Environments (MLEs) they are not the main differentiators
of the Alta System. However, Alta's treatment of automated assessment
and moderated teacher assessment is distinctive.
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[ About ALTA | Our Approach | Formative Assessment | Teacher Moderation | Informative Assessment ]