Questionmark™ Perception™ Office Connector

For Immediate Release

Questionmark™ releases a Microsoft® Office plug-in that turns Office documents into tutorials

Plug-in launches assessments from within Microsoft Office files

STAMFORD, CT – March 6, 2003 – Testing and assessment software supplier Questionmark today announced the release of Questionmark™ Perception™ Office Connector, which makes it easy to launch quizzes, tests, surveys and questionnaires from Microsoft Office files.

Office Connector can be installed within Microsoft® Office 2000 and Office XP for use with Microsoft Word, Outlook (with Word as email editor), Excel, PowerPoint, and FrontPage. When Office Connector is installed, authors are able to click on a drop-down menu to open a wizard that guides them through the process of linking to assessments. Later, people viewing the Office document can link directly to the quiz, test or survey, answer the questions, receive feedback and get online coaching. Feedback can be diagnostic and prescriptive. The document or file that contains the link remains open while the reader completes the assessment.

“We have created Perception Office Connector because learning events are provided every day in the form of Microsoft Office documents,” commented Questionmark President Eric Shepherd. “By launching assessments directly from Office documents you can turn them into interactive tutorials. With the extensive use of Microsoft Office products to create learning content, we see Office Connector as a means of making interactive assessments easily available. This enables educators to enhance learning events by better understanding the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors of learners. It also benefits learners by giving them the opportunity to answer questions—thereby retrieving information they have been studying—right in the midst of the learning process.”

Questionmark Perception Office Connector has an extensive graphics library that helps you create questions and easy-to-use wizards that guide you through the process of assembling quizzes, tests, exams and surveys. By launching assessments directly from Office documents you can turn plain documents, spreadsheets, presentations, emails and web pages into interactive tutorials.

Questionmark developed Perception Office Connector in response to standard assessment and instructional design practices, requests from Perception users, and careful analysis of the latest thinking on how people learn including:

• Research1 indicating that people are able to retrieve information more effectively if they answer questions periodically before, during, and after the learning process;
• The concept that understanding the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors of learners enhances the development of learning events; and
• The extensive use of Microsoft office to create learning materials. According to a recent brandon-hall.com publication2, "LCMS Report: Comparative Analysis of Enterprise Learning Content Management Systems," organizations use the following tools to create learning content:
  • Microsoft PowerPoint (66%),
  • Microsoft Word (63%)
  • Macromedia Flash (47%) – already supported by Questionmark Perception
  • Microsoft FrontPage (26%)

With Microsoft Office programs playing such a significant role in the development of learning material, being able to link assessments to them makes interactive learning readily available to organizations of all types and sizes.

Questionmark is making this tool freely available to Perception users. Detailed information is available at http://www.questionmark.com/links/officeconnectorhelp.htm.

About Questionmark:
Questionmark has been producing testing and assessment software since 1988. Questionmark Perception allows people to create question files without programming experience. Users can categorize their question banks into topics and sub-topics from which to assemble tests and surveys. They can shuffle questions and answers for each participant and preview assessments to see how they will appear post-deployment. They can present questions with videos, graphics and a wide variety of styles. Participants receive feedback as specified by the author. Answers are saved to an encrypted file for scoring and analysis in a variety of report formats.

Some 1,600 businesses, governments, schools, colleges, and universities in more than 50 countries use Questionmark Perception. Typical applications include exams, quizzes, study aids, diagnostic tests, pre-course skills assessments, and course evaluations. Visit www.questionmark.com for more information

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