Questionmark’s New Assessment Management System Raises the Bar

May 31, 2005

Questionmark Perception Version 4 includes workflow management, distributed authoring, drag-and-drop publishing, easy-to-use WYSIWYG HTML authoring, and powerful content management capabilities make it easier to organize, store, secure and publish assessment content. Many of these ground-breaking new features resulted directly from customer input Questionmark receives during user conferences, briefings and other events that bring Questionmark developers and end-users together to ensure that Perception meets real-world needs.

“We’re excited that this new version of Questionmark Perception offers our customers so many innovations in security, ease-of-use, workflow management, remote authoring and assessment delivery,” said Questionmark President Eric Shepherd. “It has been a great privilege to work directly with so many customers in defining this new assessment management system.”

Questionmark Founder and Chairman John Kleeman added, “Our customers are on the leading edge of assessment — in both academia and business — so they speak with real authority about how best to improve assessment management. We could not ask for better advisors.”

The Questionmark Perception assessment management system now includes the following features:

    • A simple drag and drop interface that makes it easy to publish and manage assessment content.
    • Multiple levels of security for each stage of the assessment process – from authoring to delivery to reporting.
    • A Workflow Management module that allows organizations to define, control and document how questions move through states from creation to release.
    • Shared assessment content repositories that enable multiple authors/subject matter experts to work collaboratively in a secure setting.
    • WYSIWYG HTML editing that can be used to edit text, multimedia resources, and MathML together in the same window
    • Support for cascading style sheets, which provide more precise formatting control than standard HTML and make it easier to comply with content accessibility standards.
    • Support for international character sets including double-byte characters
Complete product information is available at http://www.questionmark.com.

Using Questionmark Perception Version 4, authors can include prescriptive learning content within the Perception repository and easily link to it from question, topic or assessment feedback. It is also possible now to send email messages to participants or administrators at the end of an assessment.

The new version of Questionmark Perception is the result of more than 50 person-years of design and development. In addition to rigorous internal testing, more than 300 beta testers in 13 countries deployed the new software for assessment applications in nearly 200 organizations from the business, academic, government, military, and non-profit sectors.

About Questionmark:
Questionmark has been producing testing and assessment software since 1988. The Questionmark Perception assessment management system allows people to create question files without programming experience or knowledge of HTML. Users can create multiple question banks from which to assemble tests and surveys, organizing questions into topics and sub-topics. They can shuffle questions and answers for each participant and preview sessions to see how they will appear post-deployment. They can present questions with videos, graphics and a wide variety of styles. Participants receive feedback as specified by the test author. Answers are saved to a file for scoring and analysis in a variety of report formats. Businesses, governments, schools, colleges, and universities in more than 50 countries use Questionmark software. Questionmark has more than 2,200 customers using Perception and is a keen supporter of open standards. Typical applications include exams, quizzes, study aids, diagnostic tests, pre-course skills assessments, and course evaluations. Complete information is available at www.questionmark.com.