As students and the accreditation bodies that regulate colleges and universities demand direct-evidence of student learning, being able to connect learning outcomes to assessments is increasingly important. ExamSoft, the leading provider of intelligent embedded assessment solutions, today announced updates to its platform that will help faculty members and institutions get information in real time and intervene earlier with students. Built for faculty, the new release offers simpler navigation, streamlined question creation, the ability to blueprint exams by learning outcome, and easier student management and report creation.
“Every faculty member wants to better understand his or her students’ strengths and weaknesses and measure how well they are grasping key concepts. But, without the right support technology, using assessment to do that can be tedious,” said Patrick Chadd, Manager of Academic Systems and Educational Technology at Rowan University’s School of Osteopathic Medicine. “When we first started using ExamSoft our ability to provide students timely feedback greatly improved. We are excited that the updates to the platform will help us create, deliver, and evaluate assessments more easily and give us unprecedented access to assessment data to connect students to their academics in even more meaningful ways.”
Well-thought out assessments can be powerful instruments. By blueprinting assessments to match key learning objectives faculty members can determine what has or has not been mastered by students. Additionally, robust assessment data helps evaluate curriculum, instruction, and the assessment itself. The enhancements in the latest release from ExamSoft facilitate an easier implementation of these processes. Individuals interested in how the platform works can visit the ExamSoft website.
ExamSoft worked closely with faculty members throughout the entire development process including them in focus group studies, conducting hundreds of one-on-one interviews, and having faculty work directly with user design experts to create vastly simplified and streamlined process. Improvements to the assessment solution include:
- Simpler navigation
- An improved workflow that brings all system aspects to one screen;
- One-screen question creation and faster import tools to build a question database for entire courses, departments, or colleges;
- Reduction in training time
- Quicker access to help functions, like tips on hover-over and pop-up screens, support videos and easy to find reference guides, so new users can move past learning into practical use faster;
- Increased flexibility and scalability
- Enhanced system for exam building that provides pre- and post-exam management on one screen;
- Exam blueprinting for assessments to evenly cover all learning objectives and work in undergraduate- as well as graduate-level courses;
- Robust reporting and data collection
- Simple exam taker management that allows faculty members to track how well students perform and where and when tests were taken as well as provides opportunities to communicate directly with students during the exam;
- More robust reporting that provides longitudinal analysis at the student, class, course and institution levels.
Later this year, ExamSoft will release additional updates including rubric building functionality.
“Access to actionable outcomes data and insights is important to faculty members. But, the last thing they need is another cumbersome piece of technology that eats up time. The enhancements included in this release will help faculty get to the most valuable data — data that’s often buried in answer sheets that are thrown away after grades are recorded — and do so in less time,” said Daniel Muzquiz, Chief Executive Officer of ExamSoft. “Everyone is talking about big data today, but big data doesn’t mean anything if it is not relevant, timely, and a simple click away from faculty fingertips. ExamSoft gives faculty access to smart data to support data driven decisions and to help better engage students in their own learning.”
This initial round of updates is available to customers now. Current customers can upgrade at no extra cost. For more information about these updates or to learn more about ExamSoft visit http://www.examsoft.com.
About ExamSoft Worldwide, Inc.
ExamSoft provides scalable and flexible intelligent assessment solutions that give educators actionable outcomes data and insights to help every student. Its software puts the data back in the hands of faculty and enables clients to more efficiently and practically administer direct assessments and analyze resulting data to improve curricular design, test design, and accreditation compliance. ExamSoft has served hundreds of prominent academic, certification, and licensing institutions for more than 15 years and has successfully administered millions of exams. For more information, please visit www.examsoft.com, or follow ExamSoft on Facebook and Twitter.
