NAP Opt-in Science Literacy assessment 2024
Information for participating schools

Welcome. This short video is designed to help you administer the NAP Opt-in assessment at your school.

This video outlines the tasks of the test administrator and will lead you through the process of successfully administering an assessment session at your school.

The NAP Opt-in assessment Test Administrator handbook contains important information about how to set up and run the test session at your school.

It can be downloaded from the page on the NAP website where this video is located. You should read this handbook before the assessment to thoroughly familiarise yourself with the requirements and procedures of the test administration process.

The handbook outlines the materials you and the students will need on the day, a list of do's and don'ts that should be adhered to during the session and detailed information on how to administer and invigilate the session.

Importantly, the handbook also contains the Test Administration script. The purpose of the script is to ensure that your students are provided the same set of instructions as students in all other participating schools.

The script is designed to be read verbatim and contains all the instructions a student will need to sit the assessment including how to navigate the test platform.

You will need to either print out a copy of the handbook or download it to a portable device that you will have access to for the duration of the assessment. You will need to read from the script and consult the handbook multiple times during the assessment.

Before your scheduled test date you will be provided with a test administrator pack by the principal on that coordinator. The test administrator pack contains the test administrator session slip for the test session and students session slips for all students participating in the test session.

The test administrator session slip displays the name of the participating class and includes space to add further details at the session. The web address you will need to navigate to is shown here along with the username and password you will need to log in and create the test session.

The students session slips must be handed out to students on test day. The slips contain the individual student details and student code they will need to log into the assessment. Before the session you will need to cut up these slips ready for distribution.

Please keep these in a safe place ready for the assessment. The assessment consists of a set of practice questions which take about 5 minutes, followed by the actual assessment questions. 60 minutes for Year 6 and 75 minutes for Year 10. In total, we suggest allowing about 90 minutes for the entire session.

On test day, you'll need to log into the test administrator dashboard on your TA computer. Note that as the test administrator you do not need to log in through the NAP locked down browser. Instead, you must navigate to the assess form website and select that NAP opt-in environment.

At the login screen enter the TA login details from your test administrators session slip into the username and password fields and click Login. Next click on Create new test session. Once the TA dashboard appears, the unique session code will be displayed.

This particular code on your screen is just for this demonstration. Make a note of your session code on your student login sheet and also write it on the board so the students will be able to see it. All of the steps so far should be done ahead of time before students enter the room.

Computers will need to be logged in using a profile that is able to access the locked down browser program. On each device click on the NAP desktop shortcut to open the login screen of the locked down browser. You can either do this yourself before students enter the room. Or you can ask students to open the NAP locked down browser on their computer themselves.

When the students are settled and you ready, provide each student with their student session slip. You will then read from the script in your test administrators handbook to guide students through the login process. When the locked down browser is launched, the first screen that a student sees is the welcome screen. You'll then instruct the students to click on the NAP Opt-in tile which will take them to the audio check screen.

As there is no audio for this assessment, students should select the 'I do not need to check my audio' option. After clicking Start Test, students will now see the session login screen and should enter the session code that you wrote on the board and then click the Next button. On the next screen students should now enter their 8 letter student code which is written on their students slip. As students type the student code the characters will automatically default to capitals regardless of whether capslock or the shift key are pressed.

After clicking the next button, each student will then be required to confirm their details on screen. The student details either an ID number or their name depending on what your school has chosen to use will appear on the student's slip above the student code. If the student clicks No at this point, they will be logged out of the platform. If this happens, you will need to check that the student has the correct students slip and ask the student to restart the login process.

Once the student clicks, yes, they will see this screen. As you assist students with this process, you will also be able to see on the test administrators device that as each student logs in, they will appear on the TA dashboard and their IDs will appear here. So far in this example, 3 students have logged in. Eventually, you will want to see the same number of students in this list as students in the room. Notice the tabs at the top here.

The first tab lists all of the students that have logged in. The other tabs classify the students according to their status during the test. At the moment all the students are also listed under the Not Started tab because we haven't started the test yet. Once we start the test, the students will move to the Started tab. Here we can see more students have now logged in and are listed on the Not Started tab.

Once all students have logged in, you'll take the students through the practice questions by reading the script in your TA handbook. As we do this, let's now go back to our student's machine. Before leading the students through the practice questions, make sure that they are all now looking at this screen. You will then instruct the students to select the practice questions button to begin.

Once each student has completed the practice questions, they will be taken to the waiting screen. Check that all students now have this screen in front of them before proceeding to the assessment. When you and the students are ready, read from your script to begin the test session. And then at the appropriate moment as indicated in your handbook click Start Session on the dashboard and then Yes to confirm.

This will begin the test for all students, there may be a 30-second delay while the questions load for some students. On the dashboard, you will notice that all students have now moved to the Started tab. Any students arriving after the session has started can still join by entering the session code from the board their student code from the students slip and by following the steps we previously went through.

However, as the test session is already in progress, these students will show in the waiting entry tab of the Dashboard. Once they have logged in, you must manually admit them by going to the waiting entry tab selecting their student IDs from the list and clicking allow start, the system will provide the student with the appropriate time to complete the test.

Once a test session has started, a number of other functions become active on your dashboard. Functions that can be applied to individual students or groups of students include pause, resume, finish and finalise. Pause session and Finalise session apply to the test session as a whole and will therefore affect all students who have joined the session. Pause session for instance, might be used to put an entire test session on hold when there is a significant disruption at the school during the assessment.

If you do need to pause the session, click on the Pause Session button and enter a reason for the cause of the disruption. If the session is paused, all students will see the pause screen on their device until the session is resumed by clicking on resume session. It is also possible to pause a single student's test attempt.

You could do this whilst you're fixing a student's device for example, the assessment timer is not counting down for the student while the session is paused. To do this, make sure you are on that all or Started tab and tick the checkbox next to the relevant student ID and click pause. The Paused students ID will then appear on the Paused tab. To restart a student's test attempt to tick the checkbox next to the student ID on the all or pause tab and click resume. If a test has mistakenly been submitted by a student, you can reopen it.

To reopen a submitted test attempt you need to go into the finish tab and select the student or group of students then click reopen. Please note that when a test attempt is submitted with time remaining, the timer continues to count down. Using your scripts you will instruct students to submit their test attempts once they've completed the final question.

Once all students have completed the assessment and submitted their tests, you will receive a popup message similar to this one. Given there is no student questionnaire for the opt-in assessments. You can now click OK and press the Finalise Session button. If required, you can also submit a test attempt on behalf of a student. You may need to do this if a student did not submit their test attempt before leaving the room.

To submit a student's test attempt on the all or pause tab, tick the checkbox next to the student's ID. Click Finish student and then finalise the session by clicking finalise session and confirm by clicking yes in the pop up.

Finally, we would just remind you that the assessment should be carried out under standard test conditions, and part of your role is ensuring that all students have a fair and equitable test experience. To this end, we provided a list of test administrator do's and don'ts in the handbook for your information.

Please make sure to read your handbook before test day. And remember that you can contact ACER on the Helpline at any time with questions or concerns. These details are provided here and in all communication you receive from us here at ACER..

Key actions:

• Invite NAP coordinator and school technical support officer.
• Create, enrol and manage students in the platform.
• Manage student participation.
• Undertake technical readiness activities.

Key actions:

• Create and manage test sessions.
• Nominate test administrators.
• Provide test administrator information pack including TA and Student session slip.
• Generate reports on student participation.
• Administer the NAP Opt-in 2024 assessment.
• Manage test attempts. 
• Finalise test session including unused ones.

Once schools have finalised all test sessions, they must move from the ‘Delivering’ to the ‘Results’ dashboard.

ACARA will then:

• mark the assessments and analyse the assessment data
• provide principals with school-level reports.

ACARA will provide further details on the report once we reach the reporting phase.