At my workplace, we provide courses for people desiring to obtain a license to carry construction works. At the end of each course, people take a final exam. They need to get at least 60% to apply for their license to the governmental institution. So, we should provide a certificate of completion in a short delay. However, since we moved to online courses last year, the number of students increased considerably, so the exams to assess.
As grading exams is a time-consuming activity, our team needed alternatives. The governmental institution did not approve online exams, so we continued with paper copies. Recently, I discovered an application to create and grade exams quickly: GradeCam.
We use this app to create and quickly grade exams forms. Using the mobile phone, the computer’s camera, or even a traditional scanner, the app scans each form and grades it. It is also possible to associate exams results with students and classes. The app allows the easy importation of students lists. If required, the performance bands and learning standards are customizable too. Besides, it generates valuable data for every exam. Dynamic data is presented for every exam, question, class or student, etc., using filters in the Reports section.
So, once the setup is done, the exams are graded and the stats are generated in seconds. It has been a great helper in our daily job.
There are some more uses for this application. Students can take their tests online and obtain immediate feedback with their results. However, as we cannot do that, we have not still tried it.
The application has, as well, some limitations. For example, it is almost foolproof for the Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ). But, the number of characters is too short for other questions, and the handwritten recognition needs some improvement.
We use the app only for the MCQ and analyze how to better use all its functionalities without sacrificing the nature of the assessment.
I have used an App called Zipgrade for a few years now. As a music teacher, I find that one of the things that I need to drill my students on is identifying the note Names on the staff. With zip grade and a custom answer sheet I can give a quick assessment and mark it is the answer sheets are handed in. Much better for my time management, and the students get feedback far quicker than they otherwise would.
Although the website has quite a few options for including student names, ID numbers etc. I try to avoid putting too much information on the website. While the idea of being able to track students over time appeals to me, I try to avoid having student data spread over too many websites.
Hi Deisy, thank you for sharing. This is such an interesting read. I am heavily involved in developing qualification exams. It takes a whole lot of coordination between some instructors and subject matter experts. We have them sit in a large conference room for 4-5 full days to come up with multiple choice exam questions. Once these exams are published, we always hope these exams are compromised or not. Or else we have to spend additional time to coordinating and bringing in everyone to redevelop the exam questions. I think GradeCam is a great idea that saves time, but I think larger organizations or government organizations will always question the security level on these servers. With our organization, we grade these exams in house and is verified 3 times before publishing the scores.
Hello Sarah,
The good news is that we do not have to write the complete question, but the correct choice in GradeCam. You can provide a nickname for your exam. That is what we do. So our exams questions are not compromised. As I said, we use this application to save time in grading the exam part that has MCQ. It has been a good start point and helper for our team.
Thanks for sharing Deisy. It is an interesting application for sure, but makes we wonder about the value of the exam as an assessment tool (and the regulator’s hesitancy to embrace online examinations).
Does your organization have any issues related to data sharing on GradeCam servers?
Hello Sam,
We use other assessment activities during courses, but students have to take a final exam as is mandatory. Our organization participates in committees providing ideas to improve learning but still, we have not succeeded in having online exams authorized. Regarding data safety, as far as we know, there are several policies for assuring safe use of data. However, I think we are taking some precautions. We decided to use just students’ names (last name) and the individual code in our institution linked to groups, but no more personal information is shared with this application. Also, it is only a part of the exam that has MCQ. The good news is that we do not have to write the complete question, but the correct choice, so our exams questions are not compromised. And as I said, this application is new for us too, and we are still analyzing its features.