A breath of fresh air in assessments technology! -

Curiosity

I was curious when Scora Labs invited me to review the assessment platform they were developing. As an L&D professional, I have used global enterprise class software as well as leading assessment products from India. I was also part of an assessment tool development project in my role as Project Manager at Accenture, a few years ago. I wondered what would be different about SCORA^® and I thought it would be fun to find out.

User Centric Design

The first thing that struck me about SCORA^® was that the UI/UX was refreshingly different from other products that I had used. It was friendly and the workflow was simple and intuitive. I could log in and start using the application without much help. The multi-tenancy architecture of SCORA^® allows each organization to prepare its own question bank, set up the rules and decide when and how to run its assessments, with its own branding.

The availability of multiple question types allows both objective and subjective questions in a test. Adding attributes such as subjects, topics and sub-topics is straightforward. Multiple tags, including custom tags, can be applied to enable an intelligent selection of questions for an assessment to meet the objective.

I particularly liked the design of the Examiner module that makes assessing essays and other descriptive answers and uploaded files easy for a human assessor to view on screen and mark, using a handy scoring tool. The inclusion of rubrics is a nice and useful touch to define scoring rules.

Image courtesy of Ugo Mendes Donelli via Unsplash

Efficiency

Creating a test paper using a question bank takes only a few minutes. Once we build a sizeable question bank, the smart randomization algorithm facilitates presenting different questions, changing the order and shuffling answer options, ensuring test integrity without compromising on parity. Several configurable features in publishing and scheduling tests make the whole process efficient.

SCORA^® has one of the best designs I have seen for online tests. The test interface is very intuitive and packs all the flexibility of pen-and-paper exams into a computer-based test. Once tests are completed, examinees can view their assessment history at any time. This gives them useful insights on topics of strength and weakness. I understand that Scora Labs have plans to add more AI capability to their analytics as they generate more data, which will put more power in the hands of the users.

Summary

In summary, SCORA^® enhances the productivity of all stakeholders involved in developing and administering tests. It is a great platform for any organization, corporate or academic to manage tests, exams and assessments.