Rubrics Assessment Capability Saves Faculty Time and Enables Institutions to Aggregate Direct Evidence of Student Learning

ExamSoft’s revolutionary rubrics assessment solution unites objective and subjective assessment in a single platform designed to provide a consistent and comprehensive framework for giving students actionable feedback on all assignments

Dallas, Texas, October 21, 2013 – ExamSoft, the leading provider of intelligent embedded assessment solutions, today announced a new rubrics assessment platform available for the 2014 Spring Semester. The new solution, which is currently in limited release to clients, is an easy-to-use tool for capturing assessment data on subjective student work such as essays, OSCEs, papers, presentations, and class participation. The addition of rubrics to ExamSoft’s entire suite of software, will provide clients a consolidated and comprehensive picture of each student’s performance, regardless of the assessment type or delivery method.

Students crave interaction and engagement, and faculty members want to help them learn. Previously, ExamSoft offered ways for faculty to engage students with detailed feedback data based on results from objectively scored assessments. Now, rubrics will enable faculty members to close the feedback loop with students by providing clear and actionable direction around subjective assignments and assessments students submit for grading. The clarity made possible by rubrics provides a format within which faculty and students can communicate and collaborate with each other and peers about students’ learning progress in a structured way.

“Presently we are tracking student progression on learning outcomes throughout the didactic curriculum assessed through traditional exams,” Dr. Jane Souza, an Assistant Dean of Assessment at St. John Fisher College, said. “With the introduction of rubrics, we will soon be able to document student achievement on performance-based assessments which include counseling sessions, oral presentations, and formal papers. The collective data will provide us a more complete view of student progress.”

With the added functionality, faculty members will be able to create templates for rubrics, which will cut down on time required to recreate new rubrics for each assessment and give faculty members the ability to easily share rubrics across departments and the institution. Faculty will also be able to share rubrics with students in advance of an assignment and conduct complex grading strategies, such as anonymous grading and consistent peer or TA grading. Finally, the new functionality will enable faculty to run comprehensive analytics reports of student learning filtered by student, class, or course—all with one click. Aggregating student, course, and program by learning objectives, helps all institutional stakeholders, without placing any additional burden on faculty.

"Faculty and institutions are being asked to do more with less. They are being asked to both prove and improve student learning at a level of unprecedented granularity," said Daniel Muzquiz, CEO of ExamSoft. "We are hearing from universities that they want solutions that leverage existing assessment efforts in a pragmatic way. Our rubrics solution is purpose-built to make it easy for faculty to capture the metadata, using an automated system, needed to generate real-time learning analytics, while keeping their current assessment processes stable. Real-time data empower faculty to intervene earlier to help current students and faculty achieve their goals."

ExamSoft is used by over 500 clients and the new rubrics functionality is now available in limited capacity to existing customers. Current ExamSoft users can send an email to rubrics@examsoft.com to learn more. A webinar will be held on Wednesday, October 23 at 3 pm ET to learn about how ExamSoft's new rubrics functionality was designed for faculty, by faculty, and discover how St. John Fisher College plans to use rubrics to develop a comprehensive picture of student learning and their curriculum. Register for the webinar at http://learn.examsoft.com/webinar/rubrics-launch.

“This is an exciting next step in ExamSoft’s evolution because rubrics add a powerful dimension to embedded assessment. Hundreds of faculty members at our client institutions have worked with us to create a sophisticated, elegant way to harness the data and insights from subjective assessments in an easy-to-use platform,” Muzquiz said. “We’re not only committed to creating a solution that works well, but also to listening and responding to the needs of those who strive to improve the teaching and learning experience.”

The rubrics assessment solution is planned to be widely available in January 2014. More information about rubrics can be found at learn.examsoft.com/rubrics

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.

Contact:
Anne Jenkins
Communications Strategy Group
3225 East 2nd Avenue
Denver, CO 80206
703-624-6125
ajenkins@csg-pr.com
http://www.csg-pr.com

ExamSoft Makes it Easier than Ever to Access Direct Evidence of Student Learning

Designed by faculty, ExamSoft’s latest release sets the standard for ease-of-use, when it comes to creating, delivering, and analyzing embedded assessments to help every student with direct, real-time evidence of learning.

Dallas, Texas, August 14, 2013 – 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. Purpose 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.

Contact:
Anne Jenkins
Communications Strategy Group
3225 East 2nd Avenue
Denver, CO 80206
703-624-6125
ajenkins@csg-pr.com
http://www.csg-pr.com