FAQs
Tests
Q. Who composed the tests?
A. The tests were composed by a group of mathematics
curriculum experts from British Columbia.
Q. Do the tests conform to the Western Canadian
Protocol Common Curriculum?
A. Yes.
Q. What is the Western and Northern Canadian Protocol
(WNCP)?
A. In December 1993, the ministers responsible
for education in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia,
Yukon Territory and Northwest Territories signed the Western Canadian
Protocol for Collaboration in Basic Education (WCP), Kindergarten
to Grade 12. In February 2000, Nunavut also joined WCP. Several
cooperative projects are underway, including the development of
common curriculum frameworks with learning outcomes in mathematics,
language arts and international languages. The first common framework
in mathematics, Kindergarten to Grade 9, was released in English
and French in June 1995. The first common framework in English Language
Arts was released in 1996.
Visit the WNCP website at http://www.wncp.ca
Q. Can I print or otherwise use questions from
the online tests?
A. No. The rights holder (Vancouver IslandNet)
licenses the use of the tests to testonline.ca, and does not permit
other uses without expressed written permission of Vancouver IslandNet.
Q. Can I print the tests for classroom use?
A. No, that use is not permitted.
Q. If my district has already purchased the tests
from vancouver IslandNet, can we subscribe to your service?
A. Yes.
Scheduling
Q. Can my students do the tests at any time?
A. Yes, once you have uploaded the student data
for a division, the students can complete the tests.
Q. When are the tests usually administered?
A. You can administer the tests at any time during the year. Most
districts administer them in October and November, and again in
April, May and June.
Q. Do we have to contact you when a division is
ready to take the tests?
A. No. As long as your district is a registered
user, your district coordinator can upload your data, have the student
complete the tests, and download the reports at any time.
Uploading Student Data
Q. Why, when I upload my database, do the tests
not appear in Reports Management?
A. One reason could be that in the School field,
you used a school name rather than a school number. The School field
only works with the Ministry of Education school numbers. To correct,
open your school data (.CSV) file that contains the data you uploaded,
and change all the incorrect school names to school numbers. Then
re-upload your database.
Q. How do I find the Ministry-assigned number
of schools in my district?
A. On the Upload Student Data page, there is a
link Lookup School & District ID. The numbers for all the schools
in your district will appear in a list.
Q. Error messages appear when I try to upload
my file.
A. The most common cause of this problem is that
you have inadvertently saved the upload file as an .XLS file rather
than a .CSV file. See User's Guide Appendix 3 for
help.
Reports
Q. Can I request additions to the reports?
A. Yes, you can request to have additional demographic
fields (e.g. ESL) added to the tests.
Q. How soon after the test session do I get my division, student,
school and district reports and databases?
A. Your reports are available for download immediately, and at any
time.
Q. Can I get my data file?
A. Yes. You own your data, and you can download
it as a .CSV file by school/grade and by district/grade at the end
of the Fall (Formative) and Spring (Summative) sessions.
District Registration and Administration
Q. Can we have more than one District Coordinator.
A. Yes, you can have up to three assistant coordinators.
To add coordinators (or to change or edit coordinators), go to http://testonline.ca/admin
and click on Add/Edit Coordinators.
Q. Can our students log in using their student
number rather than their PEN?
A. Yes. Simply insert student numbers in the PEN
field (column) of the database to be uploaded.
Security and Privacy
Q. Is student data protected by secure sockets
layer?
A. Yes. Students log in to https://testonline.ca.
Notice that the start of the URL has an 's'. That means that an
SSL certificate has been installed on testonline.ca
Q. What is SSL?
A. (pronounced as separate letters) Short for Secure
Sockets Layer, a protocol developed by Netscape for transmitting
private documents via the Internet. SSL uses a cryptographic system
that uses two keys to encrypt data - a public key known to everyone
and a private or secret key known only to the recipient of the message.
Both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer support SSL, and many
Web sites use the protocol to obtain confidential user information,
such as credit card numbers.By convention, URLs that require an
SSL connection start with https: instead of http:.
Q. Will Testonline.ca sign an agreement regarding
personal student information?
A. Yes. We will sign any agreement with any district
that assures the District that we will protect student data.
Q. What is your Privacy Policy.
A. Our Privacy Policy can be accessed at https://testonline.ca/privacy.htm.
The policy is based on a template taken from the BC Information
and Privacy Commissioner's website http://www.oipcbc.org/, and adapted
for our purposes.
Upload Student Data – FAQs
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