Quia Announces Sophisticated New Quiz and Grading E-Learning Tools

December 7, 2000

BURLINGAME, Calif. — Quia Corporation, the Internet’s largest collaborative educational resource, today announced several new enhancements to its technology, showcased on its booming education Web site (www.quia.com) that already attracts more than 400,000 loyal users per month.

Instructors can now design quizzes on Quia with interchangeable question formats, such as multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, pop-up and short essay, all in one quiz. The technology enhancements additionally allow Quia users to incorporate pictures and clip art into their learning experiences. Educators find that the state-of-the-art, robust technology remains as simple to use as Quia’s other award-winning tools, and learners enjoy the variety and greater interactivity of the quizzes.

Quia is also introducing the industry’s first online “hybrid grading” system that permits an exam to be graded by both instructor and computer. The computer grades multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions, but it still gives instructors the flexibility to grade essay questions and manually override the computer grading system. In this way, the grading process is easier, faster, and more accurate than ever before.

“With these enhancements, Quia extends its leadership role in Web-based educational technology,” said Paul Mishkin, founder and CEO of Quia. “Educators can now create highly compelling online assessments, with new capabilities for evaluating learner performance easily, rapidly and fairly.”

Quia has added a unique, new feature that reduces the possibility of bias by allowing tests to be graded by groups of identical questions rather than student-by-student. An instructor does not see which student is being graded until the process is completed. Instructors can analyze all their students’ answers to each question and see how they compare.

In addition, Quia users have access to reporting functions largely absent in the education market until now. An educator can analyze student performance in dozens of ways, uncovering information like the percentage of a class that answered a particular question correctly, or a list of the most commonly missed questions on an exam, with references to the students that missed them.

“Quia’s new features allow me to easily and quickly create online quizzes with a wide range of question types — multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank and short essay. It saves me time and resources and my students love them. There are lots of educational resources on the Internet, but there is nothing like Quia,” said Professor Lynn Bradman of Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Nebraska.

About Quia

Quia Corporation is a privately held Internet technology company specializing in educational tools and content. Quia licenses its technology to corporate customers and educational publishers. The showcase for Quia’s technology, the Quia Web site, is the Internet’s largest collaborative educational resource. It offers users free, innovative technology to create customized learning activities. More than 400,000 educators and learners visit Quia each month to create, use, and share learning activities and assessments. Quia.com has more than 500,000 online games and quizzes in more than 40 subject areas ranging from basic math to genetics. For more information about Quia, please visit www.quia.com on the World Wide Web.