News & Updates

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What's New in ESII?

Differences in the processing of exams between ESII and the previous system (Marker)

There is no error report produced, which is a limitation of the Exam System II (ESII) software. The Marker software reported on a selection of errors and outputted them to a file for the client to determine what to do with them. ESII reports on two different error types (missing student number and multiple response to a question) and prints them on the bottom of the sheet which are placed on top of the batch. The client must check the top few sheets of each returned batch to determine what to do with the errors.

Marker had the ability to grant more than 1 mark per question. ESII can only give 1 mark per question.

Marker had an option to deduct a mark or fraction of a mark if the answer to a question was incorrect. ESII does not have this function.

Marker had an option to produce sub-tests. ESII can also produce sub-tests but the client must provide a solution sheet for each sub-test.

Deleting a question from the exam - this could not be done by Marker and was not in any information available to the clients but could be achieved by using the sub-test option. ESII has this option available.

All students given a mark for a question - this could not be done by Marker and was not in any information available to the clients but could be achieved by the manual editing of the raw data file. ESII has this option available.

Either/Or - what is referred to as the “Either/Or” option is where, for example, either A or C could be the correct answer to a question. This option was not able to be done by Marker and was not in any information available to the clients, but could be achieved by the manual editing of the raw data file. This is not available in ESII.

More than one answer for a correct answer - this is similar to the “Either/Or” but is inclusive (that is, both A and C have to be present for the answer to be correct). Marker was able to do this but had difficulty determining if the second response was valid. A lot of manual checking was involved to validate the multiple responses. This is not available in ESII.

Differences in the reports produced by ESII and Marker

The information within the reports from both systems are similar but the formatting is quite different.

The text file that is produced does not include the percentage column. The Curwen Results program had a problem with inputting of the text file which contained incomplete student numbers. This has been corrected with the error handling within ESII so that a complete student number is provided in the file. This is achieved by ESII placing an X for a missing character or if the student number is blank the operator determines what it should be and inputs it.