Strengths:

Ø       Installation is quick and setting up practice exercises, quizzes, tests, or exams is a simple process

Ø       The instructor signs in, creates a test, registers students and they can begin taking the test

Ø       A variety of plans ranging from free, which lets you manage one exam, to $99, which includes an unlimited number of tests (All plans have a free 30 day trial)

Ø       Can be accessed from any site with Internet access

Ø       Grading and scoring can be automated

Ø       Secure SSL encryption

Ø       Pages on the site are Bobby approved, WCAG approved, and Section 508 approved for accessibility

Ø       The instructor canview exam scores, number of retakes, graded exams, and send reports to students.

Ø       Multiple teachers can track scores

Ø       Graphic attachments can be uploaded in JPG, GIF, and PNG formats

Ø       Includes tutorials to demonstrate various functions

Ø       Exams can be paused and resumed later

Ø       Graded exams can be reviewed and even retaken

Challenges:

*         Price may prohibit individual teachers from consistently using Exam Professor, i.e. $9 a month for individual teacher and 25 tests

*         Because exams can be paused, multiple choice factual type exams may be less reliable for assessment. Students can look up or find answers rather than completing work themselves.

*         Exams are only self-checking when formatted as multiple choice within the program format

Application for this course:

In designing assessments for any course it is necessary to use a variety of tools which can measure performance across the levels of Bloom’s taxonomy from the more knowledge specific recall level through the higher order thinking levels of application, evaluation, and synthesis of material.  Exam Professor is a relatively easy tool for both instructor and student to use. It could provide immediate feedback to the student and thus guide the learner.  After self-assessing, the learner can make adjustments or review appropriate materials and exercises. 

Specifically, I would use Exam Professor in two different ways. First I would use this tool to create worksheets which are immediately graded on recall of specific information, for example, the elements included in reading workshop and writing workshop and their general definitions. Students need to understand the lexicon of balanced literacy and this provides them with a way to assess their own knowledge. Because this task is primarily knowledge and recall based I am not weighting it very heavily in my assessment. I am more interested in how students respond to the opportunities to self assess and adjust their future work.  Normally I would not use this level of assessment as a reliable measure because the opportunity to cheat is fairly high. But because the tool is being used here as a self assessment, I am not concerned with students asking for help or looking up information. If they choose to seek help, then the assessment actually becomes a learning strategy and that’s fine. The second way that I’d use Exam Professor is to have students answer open-ended exam questions. Because the questions would require a synthesis and application of information to a new situation, the students would be required to use higher order thinking skills of critical analysis as described on the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. This makes plagiarism much more difficult. It is the synthesis that is actually being assessed. This requires a new arrangement of knowledge and as such would be rated with a rubric given to students prior to the exam.

Exam Professor