ExamSoft Launches New Rubrics Assessment Platform

ExamSoft, the leading provider of intelligent embedded assessment solutions, today announced a new rubrics assessment platform available for the 2014 Spring Semester. The new solution, which is currently in limited release to clients, is an easy-to-use tool for capturing assessment data on subjective student work such as essays, OSCEs, papers, presentations, and class participation. The addition of rubrics to ExamSoft’s entire suite of software, will provide clients a consolidated and comprehensive picture of each student’s performance, regardless of the assessment type or delivery method.
Students crave interaction and engagement, and faculty members want to help them learn. Previously, ExamSoft offered ways for faculty to engage students with detailed feedback data based on results from objectively scored assessments. Now, rubrics will enable faculty members to close the feedback loop with students by providing clear and actionable direction around subjective assignments and assessments students submit for grading. The clarity made possible by rubrics provides a format within which faculty and students can communicate and collaborate with each other and peers about students’ learning progress in a structured way.

“Presently we are tracking student progression on learning outcomes throughout the didactic curriculum assessed through traditional exams,” Dr. Jane Souza, an Assistant Dean of Assessment at St. John Fisher College, said. “With the introduction of rubrics, we will soon be able to document student achievement on performance-based assessments which include counseling sessions, oral presentations, and formal papers. The collective data will provide us a more complete view of student progress.”

With the added functionality, faculty members will be able to create templates for rubrics, which will cut down on time required to recreate new rubrics for each assessment and give faculty members the ability to easily share rubrics across departments and the institution. Faculty will also be able to share rubrics with students in advance of an assignment and conduct complex grading strategies, such as anonymous grading and consistent peer or TA grading. Finally, the new functionality will enable faculty to run comprehensive analytics reports of student learning filtered by student, class, or course—all with one click. Aggregating student, course, and program by learning objectives, helps all institutional stakeholders, without placing any additional burden on faculty.

"Faculty and institutions are being asked to do more with less. They are being asked to both prove and improve student learning at a level of unprecedented granularity," said Daniel Muzquiz, CEO of ExamSoft. "We are hearing from universities that they want solutions that leverage existing assessment efforts in a pragmatic way. Our rubrics solution is purpose-built to make it easy for faculty to capture the metadata, using an automated system, needed to generate real-time learning analytics, while keeping their current assessment processes stable. Real-time data empower faculty to intervene earlier to help current students and faculty achieve their goals."

ExamSoft is used by over 500 clients and the new rubrics functionality is now available in limited capacity to existing customers. Current ExamSoft users can send an email torubrics@examsoft.com to learn more. A webinar will be held on Wednesday, October 23 at 3 pm ET to learn about how ExamSoft's new rubrics functionality was designed for faculty, by faculty, and discover how St. John Fisher College plans to use rubrics to develop a comprehensive picture of student learning and their curriculum. Register for the webinar.

“This is an exciting next step in ExamSoft’s evolution because rubrics add a powerful dimension to embedded assessment. Hundreds of faculty members at our client institutions have worked with us to create a sophisticated, elegant way to harness the data and insights from subjective assessments in an easy-to-use platform,” Muzquiz said. “We’re not only committed to creating a solution that works well, but also to listening and responding to the needs of those who strive to improve the teaching and learning experience.”