In the product overview I realised that we at Kingston University do not use all the features that Questionmark offers. We use the Blackboard Connector for our integration with Blackboard (StudySpace) and because of this we tent to use the Enterprise Manager less, with it we overlook the powerful reporting tools QMP offers.
The new version 5 will offers, as often in this kind of software product meetings, more accessibility, reliability, scalability and usability. And I must say the examples of accessibility with buttons to adjust the fond and background colour look extremely promising, something that is absent in both of our e-assessment platforms (Blackboard Test Manager and QMP) at the moment.
Another importantly development is that they will try to open-up there platform more to allow a better integration with other applications, for example with APIs and HR-XML for 3rd party tools.
Despite our difficulties in the past to get a good working Blackboard Connector (we are still working with the beta 4.4 version), they promised a lot of improvements for the Blackboard v9 Connector and a better integration with the Grade Centre.
An further nice development is a new question type, the scenario base question. It allows you to give a scenario or case on the left followed by couple of questions related to the case on the right. There was without doubt a demand for this question type.
Some of the developments were certainly driven by commercial relationships. They proudly presented their relationship with SAP the largest European software company for Enterprise Resource Planning. They demanded a language feature to deliver an assessment in at least 8 different languages on student demand. And so the Authoring Manger v5 will became extra bottoms to do so. I am not entirely sure if the language delivery functionality is useful for a HE context and it makes the Authoring Manager less intuitive to use.
Lastly they developed a new web base authoring environment Questionmark Live. It allows us to create question (five question types at the moment) online. Unfortunately there is no integration with the Authoring Manager or Enterprise Manager and you need to export the questions by Q-pack for further use. The tool is probably more useful in a multi-author environment than individual authoring, as is the case here at Kingston.
If you have any more questions please contact me at: H.vanderSluis@kingston.ac.uk
Kind regards,
Hendrik
Keywords: developments, e-assessment, QMP, software
