The hits keep coming. This month we have improved the look and feel of Questionmark Live with new buttons and improved Question Set sharing. Now when you create one shared question set, you can create another with the same shared permissions. You can also invite someone to join Questionmark Live via a shared question set or stop sharing a particular question set.

These new features are sure to make it easier for you to work collaboratively with your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), and they’ll help you set up multiple question sets (topics) for item writing workshops. 

Watch the short video below to see how easy it is to create a new question set with sharing already set up!

Quiz and test authors need an arsenal of different question types to suit various purposes. Matching questions, which present two series of words or ideas, ask participants to match items from one list to items within the other. Learners must correctly identify which items go together–say, for instance, a state or country and its capital.

Matching questions make it possible to measure a relatively large amount of knowledge in a small amount of space, but it’s important to bear in mind that they emphasize information recognition rather than information recall.

A matching item in Questionmark Perception might  look like the question below. In this example, which uses a graphical presentation format, someone has already started figuring things out!

Here’s a quick tutorial on how to create a matching question in Perception, with or without a graphical interface. The tutorial will also show you how to set up scoring and feedback.

I’m amazed to see how far we have come with Questionmark Live in such a short period of time. Now we are delivering the much-anticipated Shared Question Sets (cue trumpets).

Shared Question Sets means exactly what it says…it allows you to share your question sets with other Questionmark Live users. Combine this feature with versioning and you are getting close to the perfect question authoring workflow tool. Watch the video below to see Part 1 of the Shared Question Set video series: How to Start Sharing Question Sets with your Subject Matter Experts!

 Questionmark Live now displays question versions and and gives you the ability to control the full version history of a question.  Watch the following video to see how you can view the revision history of a question, preview two questions side by side, run a detailed comparison of them and, if desired, roll back to a previous version. Many of the features that get released in Questionmark Live are steps toward a bigger goal and versioning is a good example — so stay tuned for the next big feature that builds on this one!

Posted by Tom King

Sometimes it’s important to know when someone finishes an assessment. Using standard, built-in Perception functionality you can have an automated email pushed to anyone you like–for instance the participant, a manager, or an instructor. But today I’d like to show how you can push an instant notification to an iPhone.

Perception PIP files can be a powerful yet lightweight way to integrate with web applications. Using only a PIP file and a $2.99 iPhone application, you can send push notifications of assessment completion or results directly from Perception to your iPhone (actually up to 5 iPhones or iPod Touch devices at once). Interested to see it in action? Take a look at this 45 second video.

It was surprisingly easy to do that with the help of the Perception Web Deployment Guide section on PIP files, and the Prowl API information. Of course, I also had to spend $2.99 to get Prowl on the iTunes App Store. If you’d like to learn how it is done, please take a quick look at the 5 minute explanation below.

To make things still easier, the Questionmark documentation team added a Knowledge Base article to the Questionmark Support site, How can I use PIP and Prowl to send push notifications to my iPhone? (Community logon by Questionmark Software Support Plan customers required). I hope this inspires you to do your own creative PIP file integrations. If you’ve already done something clever with PIP file integrations, please let me know at tom.king@questionmark.com.

Questionmark Live has become even more dynamic! You now have the ability to work in Questionmark Live in 11 languages including:

• English
• German
• Dutch
• French
• Spanish
• Chinese
• Japanese
• Hindi
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Italian

Watch this very brief video clip to see how easy it is to display your Questionmark Live workspace in a different  language. Keep an eye out for exciting new features added to Questionmark Live regularly.

Post-assessment reports provide many different lenses for analyzing the results of surveys, quizzes, tests and exams. 

This video will walk you through the process of creating four of Questionmark Perception’s 12 built-in reports. It demonstrates the basics of putting together Coaching, Survey, Item Analysis and Transcript reports. I’d recommend this brief feature tour for anyone who would like to understand the basics of using Perception reports.

You can click here to learn more about the various report types and their uses. You’ll find additional tutorials and other resources in the Questionmark Learning Cafe.

Earlier this month, the number of questions in Questionmark Live passed 14,000. That is an amazing statistic for 3 months. We continue to add new features to this powerful, browser based authoring tool including the ability to add multimedia files to questions. Multimedia allows our users to create real-world scenarios that may include listening to a customer’s voice, watching a delicate surgical procedure, or fixing a complex piece of machinery via an interactive Flash video. Watch this video to see how easy it is to add audio or video to your questions.

I prepared a new segment on Understanding eLearning Standards. This segment addresses the “how” of elearning standards, and specifically run-time communication using the common AICC HACP specification. [Don't worry SCORM fans, there will be another segment focusing on the SCORM runtime.]

Standards fans (and hockey fans) are likely to appreciate the analogies used to explain a run-time environment in general. The video also steps through the lifecycle of an activity running in an LMS environment. Then I drill down to the specific of AICC, including both the common browser-to-LMS and the compelling server-to-server uses of AICC HACP.

Finally, the segment closes with a review of key resources from the AICC web site to help you make the most of AICC HACP.

By the way, here is an extra resource for members of the Questionmark Software Support Plan Community. There is a great Knowledge Base article on customizing the Perception v4 PIP file for AICC. This article shows how you can use a custom PIP file to utilize additional demographic or custom variables from an AICC compatible LMS. Check it out.

Stay tuned to the Questionmark Blog for the next segment that will address SCORM Run-Time Communication.