In the last couple of years, the Bureau has moved from using standard paper and pencil tests to online, electronic assessments. As a result, employees are now able to take online assessment in Security Awareness and, in the near future, in Office of Procurement.
The first security awareness assessment addresses Internet security. In the past, BEP employees attended a live class on Internet security as an informational reminder about the care employees should take when interacting over the web. However, none were tested afterwards because of the difficulty and expense of assessing what 2700 employees had learned using a manual test.
Now, however, the department is moving its courses and assessments into the 21st century, digitizing everything. As a result, instead of spending a day in the classroom, individual employees can download a PowerPoint presentation or PDF file on Internet security and then take a ten-question, true/false online assessment. Employees receive an e-mail that provides a link to the site where they can access the content and then take the assessment.
The Bureau chose Questionmark Perception for these assessments because it enables the Bureau to schedule the exams, grade them, and then report who took and passed the course – all automatically.
According to John Bilinski, an application developer at the Bureau, using online assessments made the process much faster and easier for the department’s managers, and it assures that everyone has read the material and taken the test.
“Now all the managers have to do is print out reports,” he said. “It’s a lot faster and more efficient."
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