Melaa™
For admins · 5 min read

Student Work Samples

Optionally keep examples of student work as evidence for exit decisions and monitoring, after your account owner accepts the addendum.

Off until your owner turns it on

  1. Work samples are off for every district by default. Nothing can be uploaded and nothing appears until your account owner turns them on.
  2. The owner goes to Settings, finds "Student work samples", clicks "Review addendum and turn on", reads the Student Work Samples Addendum, types their name and title, ticks the box, and clicks "Accept and turn on". Melaa records the acceptance, adds it to your audit log, and emails the owner a copy. Other admins can see the status but cannot change it.
  3. You can read the addendum before deciding at melaa.app/data-sharing/work-samples.

If your district has a signed Data Privacy Agreement that lists the data elements Melaa may collect (in Colorado, under C.R.S. 22-16-108), send the amended element list to whoever manages that agreement before staff upload work samples.

Owner settings

  1. "Let teachers view and upload" gives teachers access for students on their own roster. Leave it off to keep work samples with administrators.
  2. "Keep each sample for" sets retention from 1 to 5 years (2 by default), counted from the day each sample is uploaded. A change applies to new uploads; "Apply to existing samples" recalculates the rest.
  3. "Turn off" hides every work sample and stops uploads immediately. Stored files are kept until their retention date.
  4. "Delete all work samples now" permanently deletes every work sample file and its details for your district after you type DELETE to confirm. It is recorded in your audit log.

Adding and viewing samples

  1. Open a student's profile and find "Work samples". Click "Add work sample", or drop a file onto the card. On a phone, "Take a photo" opens the camera.
  2. PDF, JPEG, PNG, WEBP, HEIC and Word (.docx) files up to 15 MB are accepted, up to 200 per student. Melaa checks each file's contents, not just its name, and refuses anything else.
  3. Add a title, the date of the work, the domains it shows, the class or assignment, a description, and what it shows about language use. Remove or cover other students' names before uploading; Melaa warns about names in what you type, but it cannot see inside the file.
  4. Filter by domain or date, and click a sample for its details, Open, Download, or Delete. School admins see samples only for students in their schools.

Work samples are never sent to the AI assistant. Files are private: each open or download uses a link that expires after 60 seconds and is recorded in your audit log. During a Melaa support session, files cannot be opened and the details are hidden.

Using samples as evidence

  1. On Progress, when you mark a student exited, tick samples under "Attach work samples". Their titles, dates and domains are listed in the redesignation/reclassification packet and the audit binder, and the samples show "Exit evidence" on the profile. Undoing the exit removes the link.
  2. On Monitoring Check-ins, tick samples under "Attach work samples" when you record or edit a check-in. The samples show "Check-in" on the profile.

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