8.0.0: Practique Server

Segregated Question Bank

Question bank segregation allows you to control the authoring and management of items more granularly across your organisation.  It provides efficiency and extra security in your exam processes as users only see what they need to reduce errors. Previously permissions were based around functional elements of the Practique system (create an item; edit an item set etc). The new Question Bank Segregation feature gives you the capability to manage permissions across different groups within your organisation, such as specialities or year groups.  

For example; "I am a cardiologist, and I don't want my urologist colleagues seeing my questions", "I am a Year 3 coordinator, and I don't want to have access to Year 2 content” or "I am a medicine administrator, and I don't want my colleagues in nursing to be able to use medicine questions in their exams"

As an administrator, you will be able to determine which areas of the system users can view and edit by tagging them based on a blueprint dimension, with the ability to assign different roles per speciality for those users with multiple.

Question Bank Translation 

For customers who need to deliver exams in multiple languages, you can now create and manage translated versions of your questions and resources.  Question authors can select the language with which they want to create the question/resource in, and from the original item create a translated version to link them together simply. New filtering is available so you can search for specific language versions.  When adding resources to questions Practique will automatically choose the resource in the same language as the question if there is one available.  

Users can have a preferred language as authors, so everything they create will be in their language as default.

Multi Part Written Questions

Question authors can construct multi part SAQs so that questions can have sub questions included.  Each sub question has a stem, number of lines, number of marks, model answer, comments and tagging associated with it.  You can also add image resources and tables at the sub question level. And you can re-order the subquestions easily.  The questions can be exported to word should paper based exams be required, and will be available by PDF in a future release.  You can also now upload multi-part questions by CSV/XLXS should you be looking to batch larger quantities.

Translated Exam Delivery

Your translated questions can now be delivered electronically or on paper (PDF or Word).

MCQ/SBA Randomisation

You can view questions in the question bank with the answers ordered either alphanumerically or custom order (order they are created in).  When delivering the exam you can choose to display the question answers either alphanumerically, custom order or randomly.

Customised Item Review Process

Your organisation can now add extra stages to the default item review process (draft, pending, approved, archived/retired) to more closely match your in-house process.  For example 'ready for review' before pending, or 'reviewed' after.

Mark Amendments Logging

For added security any mark amendments have to be approved and an audit trail is now available to assure that any changes to marks are attributed to a user. 

Adjustable Borderline Marking

In standard setting, you can now apply ‘Adjustable Borderline Regression’ to set the intercept value for the exam or at individual station level if required. By default, Practique sets the intercept at 1.0, this value can now be adjusted to 1.5 for example.

Marks for SAQ Questions

Question Markers are now able to see maximum marks available for SAQ questions in the word and PDF previews, and space has been added to the questions to allow room for marks to be added.  Candidates will also be able to see the total marks for SAQ items in their exam so they know how long their answers should be.

Sequential testing for OSCE

For customers who use sequential testing for OSCE, it is now possible to combine the results of each sequence to produce an overall set of results for a cohort. In sequential testing, candidates who fail the exam (sequence 1) are required to sit a further exam (sequence 2) to determine their overall pass/fail outcome. Candidates who pass sequence 1 undergo no further testing.