Archives: Resources and Tools

Transform your teaching with Aquifer’s new Educator Dashboards that make it easy to access data and get actionable insights.

Identifying Learning Opportunities

• Time Analysis: Look for cases with consistently low completion times–these may indicate content that’s too easy for students or situations where students are rushing.
• Most Missed Question: Use PracticeSmart data to identify concepts that need reinforcement.
• Completion Patterns: Monitor which cases have the highest and lowest completion rates.

Course Management Insights

• Content Coverage: Use the Conditions Covered export to ensure comprehensive curriculum coverage.
• Student Engagement: Track overall activity levels to see what content has higher or lower levels of student engagement.
• Performance Trends: Monitor changes over time by adjusting your date range.

Making Data-Driven Decisions

• Curriculum Adjustments: Use completion time data to identify potential adjustments to case assignments.
• Resource Allocation: Focus efforts on areas where students show the most difficulty.

Use the controls at the top of your dashboard to focus your data and analysis. Take action to see refreshed real-time data.

Date Range

• Default: Date range defaults from July 1st of current academic year to today.
• Customize: Edit start/end dates independently–with changes applying to all cards.
• Reset: Click “Reset Dates” to return to default range.

Date selections persist across sessions and carry over when you open detailed reports.

Content Usage Log – AVAILABLE NOW

This card presents a detailed view of student engagement with course materials.

Key Features

• Search: Find content by case titles, diagnoses, learning objectives, or case synopses.
• Filter: View data for all courses or drill down to specific ones.
• Engagement Analysis: Compare actual time spent against recommended time.
• Pink Alert: This overlay shows up on cases if the average time is less than 25% of recommended time, and may indicate rushing/low engagement.
• Direct Navigation to Reports: Click the “Course Report” button to access detailed reports.
• Export Options: Select this to pull detailed reports for further analysis.

Snapshots and Trends – COMING IN JULY!

Your comprehensive overview of all Aquifer activity within your permissions.

Cases Section

• Total Completions: See overall case completion numbers.
• Conditions Covered: View a detailed list of medical conditions and diagnoses covered in your cases.
• Time Analysis: Identify cases with the lowest and highest average completion times compared to recommended times.

PracticeSmart Section

• Question Activity: See the total number of practice questions answered by your students.
• Performance Insights: View the most commonly missed question to identify learning gaps.

Note: When a course has fewer than 5 students, this block does not display any data.

Calibrate Section

• Assessment Data: View submitted Calibrate assessments (if you have access).
• Integration Status: Learn about Calibrate availability for your courses.

Integrated Illness Scripts (IIS) Section

• Usage Tracking: Monitor how many IIS resources students are accessing.
• Course-Specific Data: See data available for courses containing IIS content.

Optimizing Your View

• Regular Date Range Updates: Periodically adjust your date range to focus on specific time periods.
• Card Organization: Arrange cards in order of importance for your daily workflow.
• Course Selection: Use course filters to focus on specific courses or student groups.

Data Interpretation Tips

• Context Matters: Always consider the number of completions when interpreting time-on-case data.
• Trend Analysis: Look at data over time rather than single snapshots for better insights.
• Permission Awareness: Remember that your data view is limited to your assigned courses and roles.
• Faculty Engagement: Factor this in as it is important as a driver of student engagement, from onboarding to the use of cases and courses.

Getting Additional Support

If you need help interpreting your data or want to explore advanced analytics with support from the Aquifer team, click on the “QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR DATA” button on the top right and select an option.

• FAQs Button: Check out the FAQs for quick answers to common questions.
• Schedule a Meeting: Book a consult with our Adoption & Use team for support implementing Aquifer and leveraging your data.

For role-specific questions, see our article on Roles & Permissions or contact your institution’s Aquifer administrator to request updated permissions. Your Aquifer administrator’s name and email address can be found on your profile screen by clicking the user avatar in the lower left corner of the navigation bar.

It’s easy to get started using Calibrate with your students. Calibrate is included with your subscription to the corresponding course and is flexible to meet the needs of your students and curriculum.

1. Decide your goals for using Calibrate and when to fit it into your curriculum.
   Calibrate assessments can be used in a variety of ways to support formative assessment goals. The optimal path is to use Calibrate assessments both early (within the first two weeks) and late (within the last two weeks) of your clerkship or rotation to provide ongoing checkpoints for your students’ progress. However, you can choose to integrate Calibrate to fit your needs and the time you have available. For example, you could use Calibrate once – either early, midway, or as a knowledge check before students’ final exams. It can also be used to drive remediation or individualized learning plans.
2. Brief your students on your goals for using the assessment and how they should plan to use the data.
   Will you be reviewing the results together during mid-clerkship feedback discussions? Should they choose Aquifer cases to do based on their results? How will you be considering their results? Why did you decide to implement Calibrate? Sharing this information with your students will provide helpful context for maximizing their experience.
3. Set up an assessment in the Aquifer platform to assign to your students.
   It’s time to make it happen. Once you add students to an assessment, they will receive an automated email and will be able to access the assessment from their Aquifer account. Follow the directions below to get started.
4. Check results reports for your assessment.
   When your assessment closes, you’ll receive an automated email to view your results reports. Reports can help you identify at-risk students and curricular gaps, and provide granular results to inform remediation or coaching. Learn more…

Creating & Managing Calibrate Assessments

It’s easy to set up and manage Calibrate assessments in Aquifer’s platform. Once you have signed in, click on “Assessment” in the side navigation.

Who can assess Calibrate?

Calibrate access is limited by the roles and permissions assigned by your institution. Program Service Administrators and Curriculum Administrators have full access; Lead Course Administrators have access to their assigned disciplines only. Learn more about user roles…

Create a new assessment

You can either create a new assessment from scratch or save time by duplicating and editing an existing assessment. 

If you are new to using Calibrate, you can create your first assessment by clicking on the “Build Calibrate Assessment” button at the top of the assessment page.

Complete all of the fields on the Build Calibrate Assessment form. Please note a few tips:

• Nickname: We suggest aligning this with your course or block name and adopting a standard format. This will make it easy for you to find this assessment later.
• Start/end date: Calibrate assessments can be open for  a maximum of 10 days. If a student misses the window, you can give an individual a date exception.
• Academic year dates: Please let us know when your academic year starts and ends so that we can send you reporting reminders in the future. Your dates will save so you won’t have to enter this field every time.

Adding Students

Students can be assigned to a Calibrate assessment in three ways. If you are using custom courses (or have previous Calibrate assessments) you can reuse groups of students by clicking “Add by Group”. You can also add by email list, or select students from the list display.

Automated Communication

Students receive notifications from Aquifer about their assessment when:

• An assessment is scheduled
• Assessment is open
• Assessment hasn’t been completed within 48 hours of the end date/time
• Assessment is completed (with link to results)

Accommodations 

If a student needs extra time to complete the assessment, you can adjust this using the “Assessment Timing” selection on the list of selected students. You can select 1.5x or 2x added to the time limit for the assessment.

Duplicating Assessments

If you have already created an assessment, you can save time by duplicating an existing assessment. 

Click the duplicate icon next to your assessment on the assessment page, or on the edit assessment page.

You can choose to duplicate with any combination of:

• Course
• Start/end date
• Purpose
• Students

After selecting the fields you wish to duplicate, your assessment will open. Fields will be copied over from your duplicate, but you can make any changes needed. If you have not yet selected students, you can add by group, email, or from the list.

Save your assessment when you are finished reviewing and making any changes.

Managing & Editing Assessments

You can edit your assessment at any time after creating the initial assessment.

To edit, click on the edit symbol next to your assessment.

All fields are editable before your assessment begins. Once a student has taken the assessment, the course, purpose, and start date may not be changed. Students can be added to the assessment at any time.

You can view each student’s status (completed, not started, auto-submitted) next to their name on the student list. 

Date Exceptions

If a student has missed the assessment window, you can give them a custom date window in which to finish the exam. To extend the window, click on the “+” sign in the date exceptions field on the student list. Select a new start and end date, and save the assessment.

Restart

If a student exceeded the time limit while working on the exam, you can restart the assessment for them if you choose. On the student list, click the button in the Restart column. This will give the student an additional 60 minutes to finish the exam. If the exam window has already ended, they will have 24 hours to complete the exam. 

As part of our goal to provide continued protection of your security, Aquifer will require you to enable Multi-Factor Authentication. This video outlines the process for using your email to turn on MFA. You can also download our printable instructions here.

How to track students’ work in Aquifer case–for programs that do not have an institutional subscription with administrative and reporting tools.

If you don’t have an institutional subscription to Aquifer, your students might be using Aquifer cases via one of our individual learner-level access options, which include:

• Free Learner-level access to Aquifer courses as part of the Aquifer COVID-19 response (offered to non-subscribing nurse practitioner, residency and international MD programs)
• Individual subscriptions that students purchase with a credit card to access Aquifer a Signature course (Family Medicine, Geriatrics, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and/or Radiology).
• Individual access to Aquifer’s five free interdisciplinary courses in High Value Care, DIagnostic Excellence, Oral Presentation Skills, Culture in Health,  and Medical Home, which students at non-subscribing institutions can access for free directly from aquifer.org. 

With learner-level access, students can easily track their own progress through cases and see their free form summary statement responses from cases through their Student Report available on their individual account–but faculty don’t have direct access to view these reports.

How Faculty Can Use the Student Report To Track Student Work

Faculty and administrators that want to track student work can require your students to share their Student Report from any course with you in any of the following ways:

• Submit a screenshot 
• Send an export of their student report
• Share a view of their reporting screen via video call

These reports would allow you to:

• Verify completion of assigned cases
• View the amount of time a student spent on a case
• Review student summary statements (available for cases in Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics)

Using Summary Statements

For Faculty Using the COVID-19 Learner-level Access Only

Many Aquifer cases require students to write summary statements as they move through the case. Faculty can compare student summary statements (included in the Student Report noted above) to those written by content experts. Reviewing this content will allow you to provide your students with concrete feedback, helping them to improve their clinical reasoning in a meaningful way.

At this time, expert summary statement answer keys are available only as part of the Faculty Took Kit (sent via email) for programs using the COVID-19 Free Learner-level Access. 

Student Report Views & Case Completion Details

Student Reports are available for any course available in your students’ Aquifer accounts. The Student Report includes the following information on each case in the selected course:

• Case Number
• Time from Case Start to Complete (Total active working  time in hours, minutes, seconds)
• Percent Case Completed, shown as:
  • Case Complete = Green Check Mark
  • Case Partially Completed = Yellow circle showing the percentage of the case complete – Note: the percentage is NOT a grade or score!
  • Case Not Started = Red Circle
  • Case Reset = Any color circle with a black outline
• Pages Completed
• Start Date (local time)
• Date Last Accessed (local time)
• Completion Date & Time (local time displayed on screen, Eastern Time displayed in exports)
• Case Summary statement (if applicable–not all cases require a summary statement)
• Case Reset Status (whether a student chose to go back and re-do the case again–showing only the work from the most recent case review)

The on-screen Student Report looks like this:

The export of the Student Report looks like this:

How can I tell my students to access reporting?

We have a complete how-to article for students in our Reporting for Students support article. You will need to let your students know how you prefer to see the report (video call screen share, screenshot, or sending the csv export) and when their work is due.

Is there a more efficient way to track student work?

Direct access to student reporting is available with Aquifer institutional subscriptions.   Should your program decide to purchase an Aquifer institutional subscription in the future, you would have access to this functionality.