Sabena Technics, the aircraft maintenance company of the Belgian airline Sabena, has been using Questionmark programs since 1998. Initially, the programs were being used for the screening of the personnel's technical aviation English, but they will soon also serve to test general English language skills in the Human Resources and Relations department.

Says Jean-Louis De Ruyck, project manager at the Technical Training Department: "Imagine having a serious technical malfunction because of one of our technicians misunderstanding an order." Sabena technicians must be able to interpret the English maintenance instructions without error.

Jean-Louis De Ruyck: "The key component for the success of our company has been the finding of a suitable computer-based testing tool. It had to be easy to use, be able to work with multimedia, offer a range of question types, contain advanced statistical functions, and be able to run in at least two languages: Dutch and French."

Also, the software had to be able to run on a network. "We would already soon have to test a few hundred employees, via our computer classrooms or the office pc's of our technicians", explains De Ruyck. "Initially, the project was doomed: we just couldn't find a software suite that met our requirements… Until one of our training coordinators came across a leaflet of Questionmark. Then a new world opened up for us.

With Questionmark we had found not only a product that met all our demands, but we had also found an inspiring partner who actively participated in the thinking process, and was an expert in the field of computer-based learning and testing.

"Thanks to the input of Questionmark we were able to develop in less than twelve months time a fully developed multimedia testing package that screens the reading as well as the listening skills of our technicians. Moreover, the advanced statistical functions of Question Designer allow us to refine the tests by intercepting questions that seem to be too easy or too difficult." Also the general technical selection tests for future employees will be done with computer-based testing. "We'll do this with Perception, the latest product of Questionmark", says De Ruyck. "The Perception tests can be presented on the intranet of our company. Furthermore, there is so much possible in the question libraries, that we could even give a unique and objective test for each candidate. No more fear of stolen questions going round or candidates copying. And the energy that we used to put in the manual correction of tests, we can now use to perfect our testing material. Thanks to the Questionmark products we do not only correct faster, but we can now also measure the exact skills of our employees with more precision", thus De Ruyck. It's an old dream finally come true with Questionmark…

Questionmark was founded in the UK in 1988 and was one of the first software companies to provide an authoring framework to create tests and assessments to run on PCs. Today the company offers a full range of software for the testing and assessment marketplace spanning Windows 3.X and 95, DOS, Macintosh and web environments. Businesses, governments, and universities in over 40 countries now use Questionmark software.