Questionmark Perception Assessment Software

Authoring Environment

Easy Question and Assessment Authoring

Questionmark Perception allows you to easily create, modify and delete questions and assessments. You can author questions and assessments using a Windows-based program or a browser with a server-based system. Windows-based authoring, which requires that software be installed on your PC, provides a powerful environment for creating simple and complex questions and assessments.

Question Wizards provide easy, step-by-step authoring of questions and feedback. The Question Wizards can be used to create 22 different types of questions:

• Drag-and-Drop: the participant clicks and drags up to ten images into position. The feedback and score is dependant upon the final position of the images.
• Essay question: the participant answers by typing up to 30,000 characters of text. Perception’s Scoring Tool enables grading essay questions within assessments by using customized rubrics. You may define what is right or wrong in advance by entering a list of acceptable answers or print out a report of the responses for manual grading. The logic can also allow scoring based on the presence or absence of keywords or key phrases. This question type is also used to solicit opinions or suggestions on a particular subject.
• Explanation screens: insert text or graphics for the participant to view prior to answering a series of questions.
• File Upload: participants are often required to complete an assignment which requires them to create a document in the form of a computer file. Question authors can use File Upload questions to enable participants to upload their document files.
• Fill-in-the-blank: the participant is presented with a statement where one or more words are missing and completes the missing words. The score can be determined from checking each blank against a list of acceptable words and can checked for misspelled words.
• Hotspot: a participant clicks on a picture to indicate their choice. Depending upon their choice, certain feedback and grades will be assigned. A graphics editor is provided to simplify specifying the choice areas.
• Knowledge Matrix: this question type presents several multiple-choice questions together where the participant selects one choice for each statement or question presented. This question type is used to cross-relate responses from a single item.
• Survey Matrix: This question type enables you to include multiple rows of Likert questions within a table with column headers included.
• Likert scale: the participant selects one of several options such as "strongly agree" through "strongly disagree" that are weighted with numbers to aid analysis of the results.
• Matching: two series of statements/words are presented and the participant must match items from one list to items within the other list.
• Multiple choice: the participant selects one choice from up to 40 possible answers. There is no limit to the length of each answer.
• Multiple response: similar to multiple choice except the participant is not limited to choosing one response; he/she can select none, one or more of the choices offered.
• Numeric questions: a participant is prompted to enter a numeric value, and this may be scored as one value for an exact answer and another score if the response is within a range.
• Pull-Down List (selection question): a series of statements are presented and the participant can match these statements with a pull-down list.
• Ranking (Rank in Order): a list of choices must be ranked numerically with duplicate matches not allowed.
• Select-a-blank: the participant is presented with a statement where a word is missing; words can be selected from a pull-down list to indicate their answer.
• True/False: the participant selects "true" or "false" in response to the question.
• Word response (text match): the participant types in a single word or a few words to indicate their answer. You define right or wrong words or phrases in advance by entering a list of acceptable answers. The grading logic can also allow scoring based on the presence or absence of keywords or key phrases and check for misspellings.
• Yes/No: the participant selects "Yes" or "No" in response to the question.
• Adobe Flash: Perception supports an interface with Adobe Flash that allow programmers to program customized items using Flash and have the results recorded within the answer database.
• Adobe Captivate Simulations: Perception supports an interface with Adobe Captivate that allows subject matter experts to create simulations that can provide scoring information for multiple interactions and have the results recorded within the answer database.
• Spoken Response: Using the Horizon Wimba Connector you can record a participant's voice as the answer to a question.  Scores for spoken responses can be processed along with other test scores using Perception’s reporting tools.
• Java: Perception supports an interface with Java that allows programmers to program customized items using Java and have the results recorded within the answer database.

Perception's browser-based authoring tool offers much of the functionality available in the Windows-based tool while enabling easy wide-scale deployment.

Create Question Banks by Learning Objective

Using the Question Editor, authors can edit elements of a question such as the type, stimulus, choices and outcomes. Authoring Manager also enables you to:

• Organize questions by topic and sub-topics. For example, one topic might relate to Microsoft products, and sub-topics might relate to Office products, and further sub-topics might relate to features of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc
• Add meta tags, edit, preview and try out questions
• Define your own sophisticated scoring schemes
• Personalize or customize questions and feedback by embedding server variables such as participant name, time, date, etc.
• Provide feedback based on how participants answer specific questions or score on specific topics
• Shuffle choices
• Write and edit questions and feedback with an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor
• Search item banks by keyword

Role-based Security for Multi-author Environments

Authors and administrators are assigned specific access rights that determine that enable multiple authors to collaborate in a controlled, secure environment. Administrators can define profiles for certain "roles" within the organization that delineate the authoring and administrative rights. In additions, it is possible to limit authors access to specific topics or assessment folders. It is also possible to limit authors and administrative access to questions based on where they are in a defined workflow by administrators who can now define multiple levels of access for multi-author environments.

Integration with other Learning Systems

Questionmark Perception provides numerous ways to integrate with its delivery system.  This enables third party management system to launch and track assessments stored in the Perception repository. Integrations are possible using industry starndards (including AICC and SCORM), Perception's web services API and using "Connector" software available.

Workflow Management

Perception’s Workflow Editor enables organizations to define, control and document how questions move through states from creation to release. You can assign items a status of "Normal," “Experimental,” “Beta,” “Incomplete” or "Retired" to ensure that only valid questions are used. In addition to providing convenience and structure for a multi-author environment, Workflow Management establishes an audit trail essential for creating legally defensible high-stakes exams.