Surpass

Surpass is a market leading, complete, end-to-end assessment platform for the secure management and delivery of paper based and on-screen examinations and tests.

Combining intuitive usability of sophisticated tools with precise control, Surpass provides you with the computer-based testing and management tools that enable you or your team to author the most effective questions for your assessment requirements, ready for formative and summative high-stakes assessment.

The platform allows you to deliver assessments securely through a number of different online and offline channels including PC, Mac, tablet and paper, supporting efficient item management, with one question item being available for many channels. A full range of supporting services, ongoing software updates, and vast scalability means that with Surpass, you are making a futureproof investment in e-assessment.

Navigate through the sections below to discover more about how Surpass can benefit you in every stage of the assessment process.

Create

Surpass allows you to easily author a wide range of both computer and human-marked question types, and use intuitive item banking software to create static, dynamic, or mixed assessments. The wizard-based authoring tool in Surpass allows for fast and effective item creation, or if you prefer, additional advanced authoring tools are available to give users complete “blank canvas” flexibility over the formatting of question and non-question items. Additionally, tailored workflow management processes ensure that all items go through necessary publishing controls before being included in any assessments.

Choose from a range of question types, including:

  • Multiple Choice
  • Multiple Response
  • Hotspot
  • Numerical Entry
  • Fill in the Blank
  • Short Answer
  • Select from a List
  • Essay
  • Extended Matching
  • File Attach
  • Drag and Drop
  • Equation Entry
  • Advanced Question Types

When building your assessment, different question types can easily be combined and configured to suit your testing needs. Surpass ensures that all of your item authoring and test creation processes are as efficient as possible. You can:

  • Instantly import your existing items into Surpass from a QTI file or spreadsheet, saving time and making use of existing resources.
  • Include a variety of media and supporting information resources in all content including images, videos PDFs and audio, ensuring questions are engaging, practical and accessible by all.
  • Quickly produce simple tests or use customised rules to create dynamic tests.
  • Manage the creation process with permission based workflow.
  • Organise your content with drag and drop folders and custom metadata fields.
[expand title=”Creating Questions”] When authoring content for examinations, it is essential that your approach is secure, controlled, consistent and scalable. Having a best practice approach to authoring helps to ensure validity, viability and quality. Surpass supports best practice in assessment design and effortlessly guides your authors through content creation. Workflow management, configurable user roles and secure permission-based access ensures that your content remains protected and is authored according to a globally recognised process. Multilingual content creation is supported, and questions can contain rich media and engaging support materials to ensure the best results from your candidates. Surpass also enables you to create one question which can be delivered through multiple channels such as tablet, PC/Mac and paper, saving authoring time and increasing return on investment. This also lets you easily turn a summative item into a formative item, allowing you to easily gather rich performance-based feedback on each question. Your questions represent one of the single most important investments you will make in your awarding process, so you need to make sure that not only is test creation efficiently managed to reduce exposure and wastage, but also that those questions are used to their highest potential. [/expand] [expand title=”Creating Assessments”] Question items contained within your item banks can be easily presented as groups of items in the form of examinations or tests; this can be done either statically with fixed forms, or based on rules using dynamic forms. The test creation wizard is an easy-to-use tool which guides you through the process of test assembly, allowing you to preview the available items and select them, or search them using metadata. Once an assessment has been created, this can either be distributed for further proofing, or made available for scheduling during a flexible or fixed period. In addition to having control over when and where tests can be taken, you can specify the duration, security and controls used so you have complete confidence in how the test is being used and by whom. [/expand] [expand title=”Advanced Question Authoring (Content Producer)”] ContentProducer is the most advanced content development software for assessment. It gives you full creative control over the presentation and configuration of sophisticated question items. Authors can create rich and engaging questions according your desired processes.

With ContentProducer working alongside Surpass you will be able to:

  • Work offline, as well as online, with check out and version control.
  • Configure secure access to projects and implement your own workflow processes.
  • Enrich your presentation with interactive media.
  • Choose from a drag-and-drop toolbox to create over 120 variations of question types.
  • Customise the mark weighting of multiple question types on the same page.
  • Export content in industry-recognised formats (e.g. XML, ADL SCORM, IMS-Qti).
  • Include simulations and Advanced Question Toolkits for more sophisticated question experiences.
  • Have confidence in item production with secure user access controls.
  • Immediately preview content in a delivery environment to test marking and interaction.

Building on the familiar workflow options already available, ContentProducer provides additional options for Advanced Question Types (AQTs), and metadata can be attributed across various levels – right down to individual items, and further enhances usability by providing fast search and collaboration across an organisation. ContentProducer also facilitates an extension of automatic dynamic test creation by allowing the author(s) to create advanced rules based on ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’ items, and advanced use of metadata. Most importantly, ContentProducer gives you full control; use your own templates to guide your content authors, or allow them free reign to create the very best assessments for your candidates. ContentProducer items can then be imported into Surpass and banked in the same way as regular question types.

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Deliver

Whether you’re responsible for high-stakes summative assessment, or looking for tools to assist in formative test delivery, Surpass can meet those delivery requirements. Developed to accommodate many different delivery channels in both online and offline modes, Surpass ensures secure assessment delivery across screen (PC, Mac, tablet) and paper.

Some benefits in delivering assessments through Surpass include:

  • Prevent candidates from accessing other applications during on-screen exams with ‘locked-down’ mode.
  • Built in resilience and mitigation means tests can be delivered even in circumstances where Internet access is slow or unreliable.
  • Deliver your assessment on desktop, tablet or paper.
  • Deliver learning or formative tests through easy-access web delivery.
  • Provide instant feedback to candidates through practice tests.
  • Deliver tests to candidates who don’t use English as a first language with our multilingual delivery engine.

With built-in safeguards to protect against poor internet performance (or even outages) it’s a truly stable, secure and flexible workflow solution without compromise. Multiple delivery channels also make it much easier for students to access test materials for formative assessment, such as past papers and practice exams. This is useful for setting homework assignments and gathering information on which students may need additional help in the classroom.

Mark

Assessments in Surpass can be marked automatically or via the on-screen human marking facility. Our marking capabilities allow you to:

  • Control workload with automatic marking on a range of question types.
  • Utilise annotations, symbols, and comment tools for human-marked questions. This is perfect for instances of collaborative script marking.
  • Assign the marking of scripts on a question level, to ensure unbiased marking throughout a whole test.
  • Associate mark schemes with items, providing criteria and guidance.
  • Maintain full control over access to moderation, re-marking, and grading.
  • Control the release of single or group results using our moderation feature.
  • Set control questions for automated overseeing of marker performance.
  • Control grading boundaries after all scores are collated, either on individual tests or full groups, to ensure scores are truly representative of a candidate’s ability.
  • Manually mark and annotate candidate responses as required, tracking all comments and marks for audit purposes.
Working with a range of organisations who rely on various methods to mark their assessments, we have developed a number of options that allow simple collaboration and automation of control questions.  With sophisticated re-marking, moderation and grading facilities, Surpass is perfect for high-stakes summative examinations. Marking in Surpass can either be instant, or enable quicker turnaround times for online human marking with full result release control.

[expand title=”High Volume Item Based Marking (SecureMarker)”]
SecureMarker delivers the next level in efficient and accurate on-screen marking of large volume, high-stakes examination programmes. Examiners have a clear and intuitive working environment to mark candidate’s responses, whilst marking progress can be monitored with ease by managers or chief examiners. In addition to the excellent standard marking features already available in Surpass, with SecureMarker you will be able to:

  • Ensure even distribution of workloads with quota management.
  • Improve efficiency across large groups of assessors with item-based marking.
  • Easily manage workload and prioritise selected scripts for marking.
  • Automatically suspend marking of specific items or scripts immediately, at any point, either at the examiner level or across the board.
  • Maintain visibility with progress and marker performance reports.
  • Use benchmarking to compare individual markers and maintain consistency.
  • Moderate and remark responses according to standard working practice.
  • Configure the roles and workflow to match your organisation’s requirements.

Integrating seamlessly with your existing Surpass installation, chief examiners and other high level users can have granular-level control over all aspects of the assessment marking system. It also enables control over unique item values, and automated human marker management using quality control ‘flag’ (or ‘seed’) items.

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Report

Accurate and flexible reporting is essential for tracking assessment performance, quality, and meeting regulatory requirements. Surpass provides you with the tools you need to collect data, measure and compare, and then distribute. Easy to use, with the depth required by statisticians, these powerful reporting features allow you to:

  • Gain insight at a glance and prepare instant key metrics for presentation with our easy–to-view graphs, tables, and chart reports.
  • Access detailed reports on test volumes, test validity, and item performance.
  • Analyse Discrimination Index, Facility Value, and Standard Deviation for all your tests.
  • Extract raw test data and transfer to your own analysis systems, such as SPSS and SAS.

Our wide range of reporting features cover everything from test volumes to advanced item analysis and centre performance, ensuring your items and tests are fair, valid, and reliable.

Integrate

One of the biggest benefits to implementing e-assessment is the ability to automate key functions. We recognise that your assessment solution is only one of many tools used by your business, therefore they all need to communicate in a way specific to your business needs. Integration needs to be comprehensive, robust, well documented, and future-proofed for an ever changing landscape. Surpass guarantees this, and secure integration services are available to share data with your organisation’s existing systems. Through the Surpass integration you will be able to:

  • Automate key business functions.
  • Retain control of your data, sharing only what you need with the technology you employ.
  • Reduce errors through manual data entry and speed up process times.
  • Control scheduling, candidate approval, and result release.
  • Integrate user accounts into a ‘single sign-on’ solution; authorisation and authentication control of Surpass user accounts is easily managed through your identity provider using standard protocols such as SAML.

Our integration services provide an effective way to streamline processes, maximise efficiency, and reduce administrative workload. We use advanced methods of authentication, encryption, and certification to ensure that your data is transferred securely. Our standards-based, industry-ready APIs allow you to automate how your system interacts with Surpass. They give your internal system the power to create, amend or retrieve candidate records, schedule exams, gather information on specific reports, and extract results data from Surpass.

Scale

Image Copyright Windesheim University of Applied Sciences

Image Copyright Windesheim University of Applied Sciences

With Surpass you have the confidence that your delivery requirements can be accommodated, either now or as your organisation grows. A critical error to make when selecting an assessment platform is to significantly invest your time and business into a system which simply cannot grow with you. This will ultimately impact your assessment delivery, which in turn will impact your reputation. Surpass can comfortably deliver large volumes of concurrent tests, taken across multiple locations, making the solution suitable for organisations of all sizes: from small on-demand Awarding Organisations, to large scale single day National Assessment Programmes. We work with you to ensure that high levels of security, concurrency, and resilience are in place at all times throughout the assessment process.

With Surpass you can:

  • Scale your whole assessment process.
  • Upload large volumes of content and candidate records via CSV imports or integration quickly.
  • Flexibly manage your teams by overseeing access and workflow controls.
  • Manage large numbers of centres, users, and their associated roles.
  • Deliver large volumes of concurrent exams across the world.
  • Maintain a full audit trail on all items and tests for accountability.