Diagnostics in Academy are assessment tools that help learners identify their strengths and areas for improvement. Results are displayed visually on graphs, mapping responses to different criteria and indicators to provide clear feedback on performance across various competency areas.

Example: a program for new team leaders includes a diagnostic for learners to assess their current level of leadership skills. The questionnaire is made up of 30 questions, and assess five different competency areas: communication, decision making, strategic thinking, emotional intelligence and team development. At the end of the assessment, the learner will have a score for each competency area, known in Academy as an indicator. 

Planning Your Diagnostic

Before building your diagnostic in Academy, it's recommended to plan the structure first. Should should consider the following:

• What competencies or skills you want to assess
• How many indicators you'll need for each competency area
• The scoring scale that will work best for your context and organisation
• Whether you need self-assessment only, manager/coach assessment, or a combined assessment

Building Your Diagnostic

Begin by creating a new learning object in your program, then select Diagnostic under the Questionnaire tab. 

Settings Tab

On the first screen, you can include your title and description, along with the type of diagnostic and progression rules. 

Academy offers the following configuration options:

• Self (Learner) – learners complete the diagnostic themselves
• Reviewer Only – a reviewer (coach, facilitator) assesses learners against the criteria
• Self + Together – the learner and the reviewer both complete the assessment
• Self + Reviewer + Together – the learner and the reviewer both complete the assessment, then they meet to decide on a combined rating

Choose the workflow that best suits your organisational needs and available resources. If you select an option that requires a reviewer to complete the assessment, you will also need to nominate the following:

• Progression rule – if the program is set up with linear progression, select whether the learner can continue with their learning activities while waiting for their reviewer to complete the assessment. 
• Reviewer – which program role is required to complete the reviewer assessment, eg. coach, facilitator. If you require a coach to review, this means all learners must have a nominated coach in order to successfully complete the diagnostic. 

Indicators and Outcomes Tab

On the next tab, you can create your indicators. These are the competency areas you wish to assess. In the example below, there are three indicators. 

You can choose how your indicators will be scored:

• Weighted Sum – a sum of all scores for that indicator
• Weighted Average – an average of all scores for that indicator

Each indicator can have multiple outcomes, based on the learner's overall score. In the example below, you can see one outcome assigned if the learner scores between 0-10 on that indicator, and another outcome assigned if the learner scores between 10-15. 

Using the toggles at the top, you can:

• Turn on feedback for each outcome, which is displayed to the learner at the end
• Include an outcome code for ease of reporting
• Keep outcome values consistent when you are using the same outcomes for each indicator

Workflow Tab

The Workflow tab is populated based on the configuration that was chosen under Settings. 

The toggles relate to the actions learners and reviewers can take throughout the process. 

There is also a toggle to enable Diagnostic Reporting. Given the personal nature of some diagnostic questionnaires, reporting is not enabled by default. 

Instructions and Messages Tab

This tab has space for you to include any relevant instructions for learners. 

Questions

The final tab is where you include the questions for your diagnostic. Each diagnostic question needs to be mapped to a specific indicator to ensure results display correctly.

You can duplicate questions, and change the order as required. 

Important Considerations

• Once learners have started completing a diagnostic, questions cannot be edited.
• Always use preview mode rather than creating test learner accounts to review your diagnostic setup.