Yes. Chalk & Wire tools are content-neutral and can be used for the full range of accreditation needs. C&W can also be used to develop and present Regional Accreditation Reports, whereby a team can collaboratively build the report in a single web document. This can either be printed for paper-based presentation, and/or presented as an easy-to-navigate website for accreditation teams before and during their visits. Additionally, state and national standards are entered for you at no additional charge.

Yes. Chalk & Wire provides a Public API that can be easily programmed to permit the secure flow of any data from your campus information systems. There is also full support for Single Sign On (SSO) web services. For the users of Blackboard, we provide a Building Block that allows faculty to easily place assessments in their course content for seamless integration. Similar integration with WebCT /Vista and Moodle is currently in development for release in early 2010.

Yes. Chalk & Wire allows each unit in your organization to operate separately within the same installation of our software, and data can be shared for cross-campus purposes such as regional accreditation. To make this statistically valid, we align performance data so that groups using different scoring instruments and ranges can be converted to a common scale for easy evaluation across multiple programs or multiple campuses.. Education, Business, Engineering, Nursing or any other group with their own accreditation or research needs can track what they wish.  When reporting, data can be summarized or disaggregated by each group, across groups or across the entire institution. Specific sub-groups within an installation do not see the data of other sub-groups.

Yes. Chalk & Wire offers a unique and proprietary compression and conversion technology for video and audio. We can turn any standard format audio or video files into Streaming media (FLV files). This means that when the work is displayed to a reviewer it starts playing right way, embedded in the screen. There is no need to wait for large files to download before the work can be seen. This speeds up assessment and can vastly increase the value of portfolios as proofs of skills and knowledge.

The space for your assessment system and resultant data is unlimited. Individual student accounts can range from 2 GB to an unlimited allocation depending on the deployment model you choose. Please call us to discuss the most cost effective approach for your work sample storage.

Yes. This is something for which we have a wide range of options. As an Assessor, you can select text in a web page and make targeted comments about the content, grammar and spelling. If you would rather not type, just talk using our audio commenting feature. Comments can be added on a criterion-by-criterion basis. Reviewed and edited student documents can be uploaded back to the student.

Yes. You can easily upload scores for each question. You can also link specific sections of such tests or specific questions with one or more standards to track progress towards goals.

Yes. Chalk & Wire's server farm is an approved International Class "A" ISP. All passage of data uses Secure Socket (128 bit encrypted), HTTPS. We use CISCO firewall appliances and 24/7 managed monitoring with advanced metrics for not only outgoing delivery of our software features but also incoming traffic abnormalities. See a full review of our extensive data protection and security protocols.

Yes. Chalk & Wire provides email surveys and embedded forms for data collection and assessment. These include use for course internships and assignment evaluation, alumni contact, dispositions (pre and post tests), demographic data, and ad hoc topics. These are aggregated and reported out either as cross-tabs or as performance variables that assist you in finding causes and relationships of patterns you find in your data and reporting.

Yes. While years of experience have produced what we have been told is the largest range of basic/standard reports and complex statistical tests and reporting formats, we assume you might have local needs that we have not fully anticipated. As a first step, you can create "Custom" reports in our reporting engine yourself, very easily, without even consulting us. If, however, you do have unique reporting requirements, please call us. We will develop any statistically sound report output for you at no cost, usually within a few weeks of notice and receipt of the specifications from you. Our mission is to assure that you can answer any questions you have about your data.

Access to Chalk & Wire is based on a "per student" cost. This is determined by the number of accounts ordered in an academic year (volume discounts) and the length of time you want each account to remain active. We offer one year, one year renewal (users renew year-to-year), two year, three year and 4+1 year (5th year free) accounts. Pricing for this is aimed at adoption by one or more units/programs of an institution, but not the entire institution (campus-wide). If you would like to discuss the Institutional Adoption, FTE model, this option is available for prices as low as $8.00/student/year. Please contact us.

Yes. Faculty accounts are provided with all the tools they need to quickly do assessments, and also with a full portfolio tool as well. Faculty can use their unlimited storage account for multiple portfolios such as one for institutional tracking including publications, presentations and professional development; instructional sites they securely share with their students, or even for their own personal use.

You are given your own, fully branded site. Graphic themes for portfolios are provided that identify the institution/and/or programs that will use Chalk & Wire. These augment the other generic graphic themes that users can choose from or adjust with a few clicks. New graphic themes can be added at any time at no fee. You can also choose to locally design your own look and feel.

Yes. You can easily do this at little cost. Chalk & Wire provides "data point" accounts for as little as $1.50/year. In this case, you can import data from spreadsheets, databases, and even from your enterprise information systems. You can then take advantage of our powerful reporting engine, CWReporter (CWR) to aggregate and disaggregate the data. If later some users want or need a portfolio, their data point accounts can be upgraded to provide for user login and full portfolio access. You can also mix your orders to include both data point accounts with full portfolio accounts and still qualify for lower discount pricing.

Yes. All aspects of our tool set are included from the start. You will never pay more to access anything that Chalk & Wire builds (including upgrades if we are hosting for you). You can choose to use all the tools from the start, or to use them selectively. There are no setup fees or hidden costs of any kind.

Yes. C&W offers an enterprise solution that allows you to host the entire system. We provide you with the technical support you need to get up and running quickly. Please contact us to discuss the pricing options for this model.

Our experience, as the oldest company offering these services worldwide, has been that direct training and free follow-up consulting are the keys to very successful deployments and implementations. We take you through assessment system planning, to full system deployment, and later provide feedback reports (at no additional cost) about the validity of your data. You do not have to "have everything in place" in order to start collecting data. Chalk & Wire is designed for ease-of-use and rapid deployment. It was designed to grow with you over time. This is why Chalk & Wire accepts only 15-20 new institutions per year. This assures maximum, expert resources are available to new clients on-demand in the critical launch year.

This typically takes 40-60 minutes. With minimal training, students and faculty can link to the site and intuitively start working. There is also help accessible from every screen, and a toll free help desk for them to call if need be. The Chalk & Wire user interface has been designed to be similar in look and feel to other web-based software in common usage, making it easy to learn.

Yes. You are free to call our assessment design and analysis staff at anytime at no cost. Support for technical and user related questions or about the use of our tools, is also free. You can call our toll free line to speak with someone at our help desk on a 12 hour-a-day basis. Email help is available 24/7. There are no additional costs for these support services.

Yes. Each time a student account submits anything to you, the work is fully archived and stored quite apart from the student's active portfolio. This version is dated and time stamped. It produces a faithful copy of the work at the time of submission. This means that iterations of the same work by the same student can be seen by both the student and the institution to gage improvement over time without locking students out of their portfolio. Account expiration does not affect these archives or the assessment data and reports related to them. You always have access to all of these.

Yes. They can continue to renew their subscription with us and develop as many shared web-sites, resumes and pages as they like. They can no longer submit to your system unless this is a wish that you both mutually request. They can also download their portfolios to a local drive at any time. This comes to them as a fully functioning website with all the required files and working links.