Overview
assessmentQ 1.3 contains several exciting new features and improvements:
New features
- Autoplay media in items
- Set time limits on items and navigate automatically
- Enable offline support in the player so interruptions in internet connectivity do not influence the user
- Use new supporting tools in the player
- Calculator
- Character map
- New Open API
- Integration with Safe Exam Browser
Improvements
- Improvements in the item bank:
- Use practice publications in the certification module
Let's explore these features and improvements one by one in more detail.
Autoplay media in items
In assessmentQ 1.3, you can play audio and video files automatically when an item is displayed. You can even control which buttons are displayed in the audio or video player:
- Play/pause buttons
- Progress bar
- Volume buttons
Or you can hide the toolbar of the media player altogether, and use an automatically playing audio file as a kind of voice-over in your item.
Set time limits on items and navigate automatically
You can determine how much time a user gets to answer one item before the application navigates to the next item automatically. This item time limit can be set in the Item tab, and is displayed in the player. You can change the label that is displayed before the item time limit in the player template.
You can combine items with time limit and items without time limit in one component. Further, you can define in the player template if there should be automatic navigation, in other words if the Previous-Next buttons should be displayed or not.
Enable offline support
Offline support is a feature that you can activate in the player template, and that is ideal to cope with interruptions of the internet connection: it will
- preload all media files when you open a publication in the player, and
- store answers locally when the internet disappears in the middle of a publication.
You need an internet connection when you start the publication, from then on you can continue without internet if required, and you need an internet connection again at the end of the publication when you want to Finish it. If you don’t have internet upon finishing the publication, you will see a message that your answers must still be submitted.
Warning: There are a few restrictions you should be aware of when you enable offline support:
- This feature does not work in Internet Explorer
- Embedded media files, such as YouTube videos, cannot be preloaded, so you need internet to watch them in the item.
- The item types file upload and recording will not work when there is no internet
- A file that is part of an item (e.g. an uploaded PDF file) cannot be displayed when there is no internet.
New supporting tools in the player
You can now show a calculator and/or a character map in the player to support your end users:
- The calculator is relevant for mathematical, economical, ... questions
- The character map allows you to insert special characters easily and is relevant for language-related questions.
Note: These supporting tools are not enabled for any customer by default. If you want them to be activated for you at no additional charge, please get in touch with our support team on support@televic-education.com.
New Open API
The new Open API for assessmentQ complies wit hthe most recent security standards and is faster than the current Open API. This makes it a future-proof solution, and as such it will replace the current Open API.
Customers using the current Open API will be contacted regarding the migration to the new API.
Integration with Safe Exam Browser
Safe Exam Browser (SEB) is an open-source lockdown browser that prevents exam candidates from consulting sources and using programs on their PC. The assessmentQ access code page now contains an integration with SEB, so users can quit the SEB browser easily without requiring an admin password.
Improved "Save as Excel" function
Save as Excel helps customers to get a clear overview of their content, and to identify any gaps in their content blueprint.
The first version of Save as Excel has now been further extended so it becomes an even greater added value: when you save a folder as Excel, you will see a dialog window with several save options:
- You can choose to include subfolders in the Excel
- You can choose which content and metadata you want to include. The data you save in Excel do not necessarily have to be identical to the data you see in your item bank.
- These settings as stored in your local storage, so they remain identical the next time you save as Excel on the same device.
Tips:
- When you save search results as Excel, you do not get the option to include subfolders, as search results are always displayed as a flat list.
- The order of the items in the export is the order you define yourself in the item bank when you click the Rearrange button.
- By default you see the entire path of the items in Excel. You can use the Text to Columns feature in the Data tab of Excel to split the path in separate columns, and manipulate the data further in Excel.
Faster item creation
A great usability improvements in the item types drag and drop in text, fill gaps and dropdown in text is the following: you can type or copy and paste an entire sentence in the editor, then select the word(s) you want to convert to a gap or dropdown, and click the “+ Gap” or “+ Dropdown” button. Then the selected word(s) will automatically be replaced by a gap or dropdown, and be added as the correct answer for the gap or dropdown.
This saves authors quite some time in the item creation process.
Use practice publication in the Certification module
It is now possible to send a certificate to a user who passes for a practice publication. Before now, this was only possible for test publications, however, several customers had use cases where certificates have to be delivered for practice publications as well. this is now possible.