Posted by Julie Delazyn

In a recent post on his own blog,  Questionmark CEO Eric Shepherd offered some insights about the 70+20+10 learning model, in which social and informal learning play key roles in knowledge transfer and performance improvement.

The A-model, developed by Dr. Bruce C. Aaron, helps organizations make the most of all types of learning initiatives – both formal and informal — by providing an effective framework for defining a problem and its solution, implementing the solution, and tracking the results.

Eric’s post, A-model and Assessment: The 7-Minute Tutorial, notes the great feedback we have received in promoting awareness of the A-model and includes a brief video that walks viewers through a business problem  and explains how to approach it using the A-model.

You can check out this video – by Questionmark’s Doug Peterson – right here. If you’d like more details, you can download the white paper we collaborated on with Dr. Aaron: Alignment, Impact and Measurement with the A-model.

Posted by John Kleeman

I’m pleased to let you know that Questionmark Corporation was awarded last week a GSA Schedule Contract by the General Services Administration, part of the US Federal government.

Questionmark’s contract number is GS-35F-0380Y and the schedule covers Questionmark Perception software, and training, consultancy and support.

GSA schedules are open-ended contracts listing the prices the government has negotiated to pay for suppliers’ products and services. Vendors must undergo a robust review process in order to achieve a GSA listing; agencies procuring Questionmark software and services through the GSA schedule contract benefit from reduced acquisition timelines, pre-negotiated rates and terms, and a simplified alternative to traditional RFP and approval processes.

Being on the GSA Schedule will make it easier for US government agencies – federal, state and local – to purchase Questionmark Perception.

Posted by Julie Delazyn

How you can use assessments to measure the effectiveness of informal learning?  If people are learning at different times, in different ways and without structure, how do you know it’s happening? And how can you justify investment in social and informal learning initiatives?

The 70+20+10 model of learning – which explains that we learn 70% on-the-job, 20% from others and 10% from formal study – brings out the importance of informal learning initiatives. But the effectiveness of such initiatives needs to be measured, and there needs to be proof that people are performing better as a result of their participation in social and informal learning.

This SlideShare presentation:  Measuring the Impact of Social and Informal Learning, explains various approaches to testing and measuring learning for a new generation of students and workers.  We hope you will use it to gather some new ideas about how to answer these important questions about learning:  Did they like it? Did they learn it? Are they doing it?

Posted by Steve Lay

With the release of Questionmark Perception v5.4, our software platform for on-premise installation, we’ve taken advantage of a new aspect of the Microsoft server platform called Windows Server AppFabric to enhance performance and scalability.

AppFabric is fairly new, so system administrators embarking on a new installation or an upgrade from an earlier Perception version may not be familiar with it.  In this blog post I introduce the basic idea behind AppFabric, the reason we have chosen to use it and which components of Perception are affected.

AppFabric was born in the cloud, as a key component of the Windows Azure cloud-based application environment. Azure is similar to the older Google App Engine: it allows developers to write applications and host them in the cloud without having to worry about the operating system, web server configuration and so on.  Microsoft have now released a version of AppFabric for their server operating system platforms, called Microsoft AppFabric for Windows Server.

One of the challenges cloud-based developers face is storing temporary information in their application when it has been load balanced across lots of servers.  Questionmark’s assessment delivery system, in common with many enterprise systems, is organized on a three-tier model: a presentation tier for optimizing the user experience for the user’s web browser or device, a business tier for implementing the business rules and a data tier for storing information.  The data tier is overkill for most types of temporary data and overusing it can have an impact on performace; that is where technologies like AppFabric come in.

AppFabric is a light-weight alternative to a database designed to store temporary information.  For example, the business tier application might retrieve some information from the database and store it temporarily using AppFabric. Next time it needs the same information it can get it from AppFabric faster than it could get it by going back to the database. Performance improves and the application becomes more scalable.

At Questionmark we have been using this type of caching solution as an integral part of our OnDemand environment for some time.  With the release of Perception 5.4 it is now a pre-requisite for OnPremise customers too.  AppFabric is helping us to extend our three-tier architecture to cover new technologies, such as Questionmark Analytics and our new Enterprise Manager portal, available for OnPremise customers for the first time in Perception 5.4.

These are our first steps with AppFabric – and we are always looking for opportunities to increase the scalability and performance of our assessment delivery platform. AppFabric may well have an increased role to play in future releases.

Posted by Joan Phaup

How do you set appropriate pass/fail scores for competency tests?

We learned a lot about this during this year’s Questionmark Users Conference from two customers who have used the Angoff method for setting cut scores and think it’s a practical answer to this question.

Alan H. Wheaton and James R. Parry, who are involved respectively in curriculum management and test development for a large government agency, regard the Angoff method as a systematic,effective approach to establishing pass/fail scores for advancement tests. They will share their experiences and lessons learned during a Questionmark Customers Online webinar at 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, May 31.

Click here to sign up for Using the Angoff Method to Set Cut Scores, and plan to join us for an hour at the end of this month. The webinar will explain a five-step process for implementing the Angoff method as a way to improve the defensibility of your tests.

Posted by Julie Delazyn

Using item and test analysis reports gives you valuable data that can help you improve your assessments – but how do you interpret  that data and use it effectively?

This SlideShare presentation put together by Sean Farrell, Senior Manager Evaluation & Assessment at PricewaterhouseCoopers, explains the principles of item and test analysis and shows you how to make them work for the benefit of your organization.

(You can learn about Questionmark item analysis and test analysis reports here.)

Check out this presentation to see how the principles of good item and test writing play out in real life – and how heeding them results in better items and assessments.