More Online Test Options

We added several options to the Online Test properties:

Time Entire Test with Breaks

Online tests can now be administered as timed tests with predetermined breaks.

The student will see a screen like this:

If you have specified a Test Download PDF, the student will see the specified link and a 30 second count-down timer. After 30 seconds the online answer sheet will be displayed.

If you did not specify a Test Download PDF, the student will immediately see the online answer sheet and the official timer starts.

The student will not have the ability to submit each individual section. Instead when the time for the active section expires, the answer sheet will lock, responses for the now locked section are automatically transmitted for grading, and the next section or specified break will start. There is a minimum 30 second count-down timer between each section.

If audio is not turned off, the student will hear verbal instructions to ‘open the book and begin’, that ‘there are 5 minutes remaining’ and that the

Time Entire Test with Extended Time (ACT)

If the practice ACT is given with Extended Time the student will see this screen

The student will submit each section when completed. Once submitted the section can not be edited again. The timer will stop after the specified time. At that time all remaining sections are locked.

Verbal Instructions (audio)

If audio is not turned off, the student will hear verbal instructions to ‘open the book and begin’, that ‘there are 5 minutes remaining’ and to ‘stop working on the test’. These instructions are given for all timed tests (by section, entire, extended time).

Allow Student to Change Timer Settings

If a student is allowed to change the timer settings, the student will see this screen as soon as he selects to START the selected test:

Any selections the student makes will override settings made by the admin and will remain in force until the entire test is taken.

Faster Answer Entry Through Student Portal

We’ve made a couple of improvements to the way students enter their responses through the Student Portal.

These updates will be live Tuesday Oct 10, 2017.

screenshot Student Panel Answer Sheet Entry Selection

Quickly TYPE in answers

When students click START to open an online answer sheet they will now see this screen, asking them if they want to type in their answers or select them by taping/clicking on-screen buttons (this is the way we’ve always done it in the past).

Students can then type in their responses into the ACT, SAT/PSAT online answer sheets.

Each field will only allow a valid letter responses, i.e. for ACT English all odd questions allow only A,B,C, or D and all even questions allow only F, G, H, J.

Students can enter a capital letter or lower case letter.

As soon as a letter is entered, the cursor advances to the next field.

This makes for super-fast data entry for those students who only use the online answer sheets to transfer their answers from a paper answer sheet for online grading. The same speed improvements were made recently to the manual data entry forms on the Admin Panel.

Second SUBMIT button at the bottom

One of our customers commented to us recently that it would be useful to have a SUBMIT button at the bottom of the answer sheet. He’s obviously right. Sorry, we didn’t think about that ourselves.

So from now on, no more scrolling to the top of the answer sheet when students are ready to submit their answers.

BTW, the mobile version of this screen has the submit button persistently at the top, so this was a (needed) change only when accessing the online answer sheet from a desktop device.