Our first Beyond Multiple Choice: Nine Ways to Leverage Technology for Better Assessments Web seminar met with an enthusiastic response: it filled up almost instantly! So we are offering the same seminar again on Wednesday, December 16th, at 3 p.m. Eastern Time.

Assessments play a vital role in measuring people’s knowledge, skills and attitudes. They also help organizations improve performance, manage workforce competencies, and ensure regulatory compliance. How can you create and assessments that produce appropriate, actionable results? What can you do to ensure the quality of questions and the security of assessments all the way from authoring and scheduling to administration, reporting, and analysis? How can you make the best use of online authoring, reporting, analytical, and security tools? These and many other questions will be addressed in this free, hour-long session, which will include opportunities for you to ask questions of your own.

We welcome you to learn more about this Webinar and register online.

We decided at our last U.S. Users Conference in Memphis that it would be good to set aside a special place for attendees to meet with our support technicians one-on-one. Thus was born Tech Central, which was such a hit that it’s become a regular part of our conferences.

As we get ready for our 2010 Users Conference in Miami next March, I asked Ed Bell, our technical services manager, a few questions about this recent addition:

What’s Tech Central? Tech Central allows customers at our Users Conferences to meet one-on-one with the technicians. We sit down with them for 20 minutes or half an hour and work through issues we would normally talk about on the phone. Tech Central gives us a dedicated space for meeting with people. Now they know exactly where to find us instead of hoping they’ll be able to find us in passing.

How did customers respond to the first Tech Central in Memphis? You couldn’t ask for a better response. The customers could see that we really cared. The first day was sparsely attended, but once word spread we got more and more visitors. Some of them would check in with their office after visiting us and then come back again with follow-up questions. About three-fourths of the people who attended the conference came to see us. Tech Central was such a hit that we took it to the European Users Conference in England this fall.

How was Tech Central for Techs? It was hectic because we had so many people coming through, but we thought it was great! Sometimes people were queued up because it was so popular. Luckily we had a really large space with WIFI, so people could email while they waited. What made it so wonderful for us was that it gave us a chance to really connect with our customers as people.  That face-to-face contact makes a big difference in our relationships with customers. When they call us on the phone, we know who they are!

What are you looking forward to most about the next Users Conference? Reconnecting with people I’ve met in the past! I enjoy seeing customers at Breakfast Briefings and our conferences. That personal bond you build from being with people is wonderful. I also look forward to seeing the customers’ reactions to the new features in Questionmark Perception,  and I always like hearing customers’ success stories and seeing how enthusiastic they are. People generally call tech support when they have a problem, and it’s our job to take care of that problem, so hearing about successes does us a lot of good! And those of us who attend the conference share those success stories with our colleagues, which gives them a boost, too.  I can’t wait for 2010!

If you can’t wait either, here’s a gentle reminder that earlybird-registration ends December 4th.

You can learn more about the 2010 Questionmark Users Conference at www.questionmark.com/go/conference.

The HR-XML Consortium is an independent organization that develops standard XML specifications to allow easier communication between human resources-related (“HR”) systems. HR-XML specifications tend to be short and to the point and easy and practical to develop for, so HR-XML has got a lot of traction over the years as a good vehicle for communication between different HR software systems. Questionmark is pleased to be a member of HR-XML.

Happy Birthday to HR-XML! HR-XML is celebrating its 10th anniversary on 2nd October at a luncheon at the HR Technology Conference in Chicago.

Questionmark has supported HR-XML in Questionmark Perception since 2005 and been certified by HR-XML to validate our conformance. Our support consists of providing a web services API within QMWISe that exports a Questionmark assessment result in HR-XML format. This allows other systems that can read HR-XML to easily process assessment results.

The example piece of Perception HR-XML output below shows that Jane Smith has taken a Microsoft Office Skills Test and passed it with a score of 85%. The XML also includes her topic scores, the date she took the test and the Questionmark result ID in case more information is needed. It’s practical, short and can be read by a person as well as by a computer.

HR-XML Consortium certification specialists validate the structure and meaning of sample data in order to provide a certification. Information about certification and a list of certified vendors like Questionmark is available at http://www.hrcertify.org/ Certified organizations need to re-certify every two years to ensure software still meets the standard.

I’m pleased to let you know that Questionmark has just completed its re-certification (see here for details). I’d encourage anyone looking for a simple assessment results exchange format to look at HR-XML because it’s simple, practical … and of course Questionmark supports it.

There’s plenty of excitement in Manchester, England, where the first general session of the Questionmark European Users Conference  brought delegates up to date with recent product releases and Questionmark’s Open Assessment Platform. Breakouts sessions this afternoon will be followed by dinner at Old Trafford, home of England’s famed Manchester United Football Club.

Tomorrow’s general session will explore the themes of E-assessment and Interoperability, Standards and Accessibility and another full program of breakout sessions including case studies, technical training, best practices and Product Central discussions where delegates share their insights with Questionmark product managers.

You can catch highlights from the general sessions via our Live Blog and/or follow the conference on Twitter.

Just as students are returning to school these days, we at Questionmark are starting our annual fall series of  Breakfast Briefings and User Group meetings in the U.S.

Our Briefing guests will join us for a complimentary breakfast and a hands-on tutorial, during which they will be able to create questions and assessments using Questionmark Perception. The tutorials take place in computer training rooms, so this is a great way to try out the software and a good opportunity to ask questions.  We will also be showing people how to use Questionmark Live, our new browser-based authoring tool for subject matter experts, and they will see new ways of managing multilingual assessments and delivering assessments on mobile devices.

Current Perception users are invited to join us for lunch, discussions about topics of their choice and in-depth looks at new product features and Questionmark services.  Not only do these meetings give our customers the opportunity to talk with Questionmark managers; they also help our team understand customers’ challenges and needs with regard to assessments.

We will kick off in the Boston area  tomorrow and work our way around to a total of seven cities. Here’s the schedule:

• September 1: Boston (Burlington)
• September 3: New York
• September 24: Chicago
• October 6:  Dallas
• October 8 and 9 :  Washington, DC (second session added by popular demand!)
• October 20: Atlanta
• October 22: Los Angeles

There’s still time to sign up for a briefing and/or a user group meeting: click here for information about the Briefings, and here for User Group details.

There is no charge for attending these events, so we hope you will take advantage of these great learning opportunities and will join us!

The European Users Conference is less than one month away, and I’m pleased to announce that Tom King, Questionmark’s Interoperability Evangelist, and David Sloan from the University of Dundee will be leading the Tuesday morning General Session, focusing on E-Assessment and Interoperability, Standards and Accessibility.

Tom King is actively involved with many e-learning technology specification groups, and a regular contributor to this blog. Tom will provide an overview of the current status of major standards and the specification organisations behind them, and highlight some of the emerging needs and promising developments.  David Sloan will give an overview of accessibility-related legislation, standards and best practice, and show how Questionmark can help support the creation of accessible assessments.

The conference is set to be an exciting two days for Perception Users with Best Practice sessions on the latest trends in assessment management, eight Case Study presentations, and some great Technical Training sessions. Make sure you check out the full conference agenda and if you haven’t already done so, register for the conference!

I posted recently about an upcoming  three-day learning event in Auckland, New Zealand, focusing on assessment best practices. Now I’d like to update you on the great turnout, exciting customers, and the full house that participated in the workshop!

The Online Assessments Symposium organized by Business Toolbox was packed with learning opportunities: the first two days were devoted to instruction on best practices in creating assessments, and the third brought together industry experts to share advice about moving assessments online.

It was motivating to see academic and corporate Questionmark users sharing  their experiences in successfully implementing assessments and enjoying some impressive case study presentations. I took these photos with my BlackBerry to give you a sense of the group that gathered.

We will continue to perform workshops like this one around the world so stay tuned for our next location.

Posted by Joan Phaup

Yes, that’s right! The Questionmark 2010 Users Conference will take place March 14 -17 at the Hilton Miami Downtown.

If you want to learn how to write better assessments, use Perception more effectively, discuss best practices, and soar up the learning curve at high speed, mark your calendar now and plan to attend!

I’m looking forward to the conference because it is the ideal place for Perception users to get together and talk about mutual interests  and help each other move forward. It’s also an opportunity for our customers to meet with Questionmark staff and air their views about our products and services.

This conference is an outstanding professional development event. But don’t just take this from me. Here are just a few of the comments we received after the 2009 conference:

“The Questionmark conferences are always full of excellent learning opportunities, chances for networking and tons of fun!”

“Now I have faces to go with contacts from other organizations and Questionmark staff.  Classy Conference!”

“As always, the conference proved to be the best conference I go to.”

“This was a great conference. I learned something at every session I attended.”

We will soon provide more information about the conference and issue a call for proposals. In the meantime, we hope Perception users from far and wide will start planning now to meet in Miami next March.

Delegates at the 2009 European Users Conference will be heading out  for what is sure to be a memorable evening at one of Manchester’s most famous venues, Old Trafford – home of Manchester United FC!

Whether you’re a fan or not, this is one impressive venue. Second only to Wembley Stadium in terms of capacity, it showcases the history behind one of the world’s most famous football clubs.

The evening will include a reception in the museum and a tour through the stadium before dinner is served. The Manchester United dinner will provide the opportunity for delegates to get to know each other after Day 1 of the conference on the 21st of September. If you haven’t already registered your place, you can do so by visiting the conference website.