Your organization's Skill Assessment

The Skill Assessment is Theta's measure of the core skills of pure-tone audiometry — air and bone conduction testing, with masking — on a simulated patient. Theta runs its own national version (see Skill Assessment); an organization can run its own, for its own people, as part of its Theta plan.

What it gives your organization


Exam rules on your courses	A lesson in one of your courses can be an exam Theta stands behind: a pass mark (each finished attempt is Passed or Not passed), thresholds entered without testing marked wrong, and one answer key for everybody — the case's own design, whatever element preset a learner has chosen.
Your Skill Assessment course	Theta sets one up in your organization from its own assessment — a reading, three practice cases and an exam — as a starting point you then run like any of your courses.
The Skill Assessment report	A ready-made report in Advanced Analytics — the exam's scores beside every technique and integrity check behind them.

The Skill Assessment needs Advanced analytics: Theta adds it only to an organization that has Analytics, and it is switched on only while your organization has both. It is not included with Advanced analytics, and it is never available to a personal workspace. To add it, contact Theta at support@audiologysimulator.com.

Exam mode, attempt limits and locked results are ordinary course settings — every organization has those, with or without the Skill Assessment.

How Theta sets it up

Once your organization has the Skill Assessment, Theta creates a course called Skill Assessment in your organization. It starts as a Draft — only your staff can see it — and holds:

About the Skill Assessment — a reading for your learners: what it measures, as ground rules (air at 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 6000 and 8000 Hz in both ears, plus other inter-octaves as necessary; bone at 500, 1000, 2000 and 4000 Hz; each threshold saved, masked wherever masking is needed; each ear's pure-tone average entered — which inter-octaves are needed, and which frequencies the average takes, are left for the learner to know), the settings every case uses, how to prepare, the rules and how it is scored — effective masking only where masking is needed. It names no price, no national ranking and no certificate. Edit it as you like.
Practice 1, 2 and 3 (Optional) — your own copies of Theta's practice cases. Full feedback every time, a new audiogram every try, and graded the way the exam is (thresholds entered without testing are wrong; the case's own answer key).
Skill Assessment exam — one fixed patient, the same for everyone who takes it in your organization. It is drawn fresh for you from the same pattern Theta's certified exam is drawn from, and passes the same quality check — but it is never one of Theta's national exam cases: not a monthly ranking round, not a certified exam.

The exam is set up as an exam:

One attempt. A learner can't restart it. If something goes wrong, void the attempt from its submissions row and they can take it again.
Results locked. When they submit, learners see their exam result — Passed or Not passed, their overall score, a score for each skill (final thresholds, effective masking, pure-tone average) and their testing confidence — never the answer key. It reads: Questions about your result? Ask your organization's administrator.
90% to pass — the overall score rounded to the nearest whole percent, so 43 of 48 points (89.6%) rounds to 90% and passes — with a testing confidence that isn't Low. Thresholds entered without testing count as wrong, and so does their masking.
The case's own answer key for everyone: no element preset applies.
No time limit. The exam opens on a short Before you begin page, which lists the ground rules — everything that is scored.

There is no ranking and no certificate: the Theta certificate comes only from Theta's own Certified Exam, and the course's certificate of completion starts switched off.

Running it

The course is yours from the moment it is created — open it from your Courses tab and manage it like any other:

Open it when you're ready: Open for everyone seated in your organization, or Invitation only with the learners you enrol — see Course access.
Edit the reading or the exam's Before you begin page, change the exam's settings, or remove a practice case you don't want. The exam's and the practice cases' audiograms can't be set to auto-fill: the exam marks a threshold with no testing behind it wrong, and a provided threshold has none, so the designer keeps Auto-fill Off there.
See every result — the course is yours, so its Submissions and Progress show every attempt in full, with the answer key.

A new exam case

If you want a new exam case — for a new group, say, or because the case has been shared around — ask Theta. Theta points the exam at a new fixed patient, drawn fresh the same way, or at a case Theta chooses (never a national exam case).

Attempts already made keep the case they took, and their results stay exactly as they were.
Each learner can take the new case once: the one-attempt limit counts attempts at the case they meet.
The old case takes no new attempts from that moment; an attempt already in progress can still be finished.
The new case opens on the same Before you begin page as the old one, as you left it.

The Skill Assessment report

In Advanced Analytics, choose New report. Organizations with the Skill Assessment see a fourth standard analysis, Skill Assessment. Pick it, choose your Skill Assessment course, the exam lesson and the cohort, and run it. Save a copy to keep it, rename it or tune its pass rates.

It reports, for each learner:

Column	What it asks
Threshold accuracy, Effective masking, Pure-tone average	The three skills the exam scores — pure-tone accuracy, masking and the PTA.
Presented a tone at every required point, Tested the required half-octaves	Were the required frequencies tested at all?
Met the ascending criterion, Saved threshold was actually presented, Enough tones behind each threshold	Is each threshold a real search, found on the way up?
Dropped 10 dB after a response, Raised 5 dB after no response, Went quieter after a response, Went louder after a missed tone	Step sizes, and their direction.
Tone duration	Were tones held on for one to two seconds?
Initial stimulus level, Initial masking level, and the two Started masking at the right… columns	Was masked testing started at the right tone and masker levels — as recorded, and as actually presented?
Plateau start, Plateau end	Where the plateau began and ended.
Changed transducer mid-test	A switch of earphones part-way through.
Thresholds entered without testing, Thresholds typed into the panel, Trail corroborates the thresholds	The integrity of the record — the last is the testing-confidence verdict.
Overall accuracy	The attempt's overall score.

Together these cover every flag Theta 3's provider assessments raised. Every column is read from the attempt's action trail where it needs one, so an attempt with no trail reports not applicable rather than a verdict.

If it lapses

If your organization's Skill Assessment ends — or its Advanced analytics does — the exam rules stop taking effect on new attempts at your courses. An attempt started then is graded without the untested-threshold rule and with element presets, and it never gets a verdict: while the Skill Assessment is off, an exam whose results are locked shows its learner no score for it, and once it is back that attempt shows its score but still no verdict.

Attempts started before keep the rules they were started under. Each finished one keeps its result everywhere it is shown — its verdict, the score for each skill and the testing confidence: in the learner's results and its PDF, in My submissions, on the course's lesson list and in its sidebar, and in your staff's submission lists. One still in progress is graded under those rules when it is submitted, and keeps its result the same way.

The Skill Assessment report leaves your Advanced Analytics shelf (a copy you saved stays yours), and Theta can't replace the exam case until it is back. Your course, its lessons and every result stay yours throughout.