Anand More of More Training Consultancy Pvt Ltd. (MTCPL) has been an
ardent fan of Zoho Challenge for quite some time. More Classes, a unit
of MTCPL, provides supplementary training to the students of Mumbai University, ICAI & ICSI. Over 750 students from his classes take
their assessments using our very own quiz maker app, Zoho Challenge.
Thanks to Zoho Challenge, almost all of them take these tests
from multiple locations.
Over the weekend, we talked to him about how Zoho Challenge has helped
him administer tests better to his students. Here's what he had to say:
1)
What made you look beyond the pen and paper based model of testing, for
an online testing solution? Was the traditional way of testing
inadequate for your needs?
We provide structured, supplementary coaching to students as well as
workshops to corporate executives. Our students appear for exams
conducted by external institutes. Our aim is to guarantee success in
such external examinations. The success of our coaching is determined by
the understanding of the students.
Many of the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), due to their schedules,
are either unable or unwilling to do the assessment of the candidates.
Lack of assessment reduces our ability to convince the parents or in
some cases even the corporate client about the effectiveness of our
training programmes.In such cases, it becomes all the more necessary for us to
help understand how the candidates understood their subject. It becomes
an indirect assessment of the SMEs too.
we are left with no knowledge about how the assessment was done by him.
We suffer from lack of organizational knowledge bank, and our procedures
remain as effective as the SME only.
The traditional pen and paper method emphasizes on testing the
presentation skills and what we want is testing the level of
understanding.
Elaborate arrangements just like examination [halls] involve considerable costs, are time consuming and are labour intensive
for us.
What we wanted was a solution which will give us:
- total control over assessment,
streamlined processes for initiating, conducting and assessing the tests
control over cost of printing
automated evaluation
organizational knowledge bank of how to assess the preparation for a subject
collaborative and location independent platform for accommodating varying schedules of SMEs
search-able storage of student performance for future reference.
ability to deliver the tests at any location
ability to reuse the questions once created
empower the SMEs with a
dashboard indicating KPIs of the students, or tests based on his choice,
without spending his time on mundane work.
This is where
Zoho Challenge came to our rescue. Although our wish list is unending,
Zoho Challenge with its ever co-operating support staff has always come
with innovative and stable solutions.
2) How did you stumble upon Zoho Challenge? How long
have you been using it?
I am a member of the eLearning Guild. In one of the weekly newsletters, there was a mention of Google Docs and Zoho Docs. That was my introduction to Zoho. I got hooked to
both Google Apps and Zoho for my coaching activity. Somewhere in 2008 (to be precise on September 19, 2008) I stumbled
upon Zoho Challenge. At that time, Zoho Challenge 1.0 was at a nascent
stage. I was fascinated by the potential of this product. The
fascination is still continued.
3) Could you please
name 3-5 specific features that made you stick to Zoho Challenge?
Hosted solution
The structure of Question Banks: Multiple tests and test reusability
Importing questions
Multimedia enabled questions
Batch feature and IP restricted tests
4) Has Zoho Challenge helped you in administering tests
faster, quicker and more efficiently? What benefits have you gained out
of using our quiz maker?
Yes, my organization has benefited
on all the following counts:
Reduced paper cost
Reduced efforts in coordinating with SMEs to get the question papers before test dates
Reduced pressure and costs in arranging the location for the tests
Providing error free and unbiased assessment
5) What would you say to those teachers and schools
who are planning to switch to online tests, but haven't jumped the gun
yet? Should they do it as soon as they can? What are they missing out?
It
is an old saying - when the pupil is ready the master appears. In our
case the master has already appeared in the form of Zoho Challenge, only
the pupils, (i.e. the schools) must be ready to work with the master.
For all the schools waiting to jump in, I can tell that the value proposition put by Zoho Challenge, i.e.
to enable the SMEs with student's understanding
to give a hosted, subscription based solution to testing
to bring fun in testing & assessment
at a very low cost
is a dream come true. This is how technology should be used to make an efficient, productive and responsible society.
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Zoho Challenge exists to make tests easy and we were thrilled to see yet another case of it being used to deliver tests to a large number of students in one go. If you're another such passionate user of Zoho Challenge, talk to us on how you've been using it in your classroom or organization: email us at support@zohochallenge.com. We're all ears!
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