If you are looking for guidance about how to create an Evaluation Cycle, visit this help guide.
A step is a unit of an evaluation cycle representing an action that is required as part of your organization’s evaluation process. For example, a step may represent--
A meeting that needs to be held.
A walkthrough form that an evaluator will complete.
A goal setting form that a teacher or evaluator will complete.
A summative evaluation form that an evaluator will complete.
Jump to:
Getting Started: Creating Steps within Evaluation Cycles
Navigate to the Edit page of the Evaluation instance.
2. Click on the Steps page:
3. Click Add Step:
Determining Step Types
In KickUp Growth, there are General Steps that can be part of an evaluation cycle:
Form step: The Form option gives you the ability to add a step that requires a form to be completed. For a more extensive guide on how to create forms, visit this help article.
Forms are commonly used for walkthroughs, summative observations, or any other data input that can be completed by either the evaluator or the staff member.
Meeting step:
A Meeting step can serve as a reminder that a conference needs to take place before a summative observation, for example. There is no data input for a meeting step (besides offering the option to add an artifacts-- more on those settings later).
There are also two options for Goal Steps of an Evaluation:
Professional Goal Selection
Student Goal Selection
Configuring Step Settings
When you add a step, there are a few settings to consider:
Step Name
This information will display to the staff member, in the way progress toward completing steps is tracked, and as a way to see data across different steps.
Step Description
This information will display to the staff member to explain this step's purpose or requirements.
Assignee
Will this step be completed by the Evaluator or the Staff Member? This will determine who can complete this step and gets notified about due dates. Any type of step can be assigned to either the evaluator or the staff member.
Due Date
The due date set will trigger reminder emails to the Assignee one day before and on the day that an incomplete step is due. Overdue emails will also be sent to the assignee one day and one week after the due date.
Requirement
All steps can either be Required (All staff members in this evaluation cycle will need to complete this step), Opt in (This step can be added to a staff member's cycle), or Opt Out. Learn more about Optional Steps here!
Artifacts
Determine if a staff member or evaluator will need to upload artifacts to this step. An artifact can be a file or a link, such as a lesson plan or video.
Signatures
Decide if this steps requires the staff member to sign it, the evaluator to sign it, both, or neither. Steps will be considered incomplete until they are signed where required. Learn more about Adding Signatures here!
Form steps will have two additional settings:
1. Form
Configure the form that will be attached to that step. A form can be started from scratch or you can use an existing form.
For example, a walkthrough form may be duplicated across many steps to give evaluators multiple opportunities to use the same form at different times of year while aggregating the data in one unified output.
The first time you create a Form step, you will need to create the form. (For a more extensive guide on how to create forms, visit this help article.)
The second time you create a form in an evaluation cycle, you will either be able to select "Blank form" or "Use existing form."
Note: You will not be able to edit the form until you enter the Step name and click Save in the top right corner of the step editor.
2. Insights Sidebar
Determine if this form will be used to populate the Insights Sidebar.
An evaluation cycle is usually made up of several steps and, especially at later stages of the process, it can be helpful to refer back to a staff member's goals and submissions that were captured at an earlier point in the process. You can use enable the insights sidebar on relevant forms to easily access this information alongside the form you are currently filling out in the performance evaluation module.
Goal Steps require a slightly different setup:
Framework:
Goal steps require a Framework alignment. Frameworks allow you to connect data in KickUp to the instructional or professional practice framework used by your organization. For many KickUp Growth partners, the Framework is aligned to the state or district standards that are used to evaluate teachers.
The domains of a Framework will populate for a staff member or evaluator when selecting the staff member's Professional or Student Growth Goals:
The Framework also helps connect goal steps to aligned areas in a Form through the Insights Sidebar.
Frameworks are set up on the backend of KickUp by your Client Success Manager. If you can't select a Framework for the Goal-Setting step or the Framework you need isn't populating in the dropdown, reach out to your Client Success Manager or support@kickup.co.
2. Additional Questions
Each Goal Step requires the staff member or evaluator to fill in the Focus (the goal area aligned to the Framework) and Objective.
If you would like to include additional questions for the staff member or evaluator to fill in, you can use the Additional Questions form builder. These questions can be customized:
Click "Edit" under the Additional Questions section:
3. Number of Goals
There are two options for the number of goals required. You can either require staff or principals to have a Fixed number of goals or a Range:
Note: When you are finished adjusting any setting for a step, be sure to click the blue "Save" button in the top right of that step editor.
You can Edit, Clone, and Delete Steps using the buttons to the right of the step name.
Note: Once data is collected about a step, you cannot delete that step. Contact your Client Success Manager for support with deleting a step that has data collected about it.
Related Articles:
Step Overview: Understand the role of steps in an evaluation cycle