TCExam
Encyclopedia
TCExam is a free source Computer-Based Assessment software system for electronic exams (also known as E-assessment
, Computer-Based Testing or e-exam) that enables educators and trainers to author, schedule, deliver, and report on quizzes, tests and exams. It is somewhat parallel to the written format test systems which are conducted in traditional educational institutions and helps the trainers or online tutors to design their assignments and deliver them in the form of surveys, exams, tests and quizzes.
TCExam project started in 2004 and now it is translated in 24 languages and used all over the world by universities, schools, private and public institutions, independent educators and research centers. The top-ranking and the large number of downloads reported by SourceForge repository indicates that TCExam is probably the most commonly used Free CBA Software in the world.
TCExam has been cited and suggested as preferred E-assessment
tool by several papers and books, including the european-funded project TACCLE (Teachers' Aids on Creating Content for Learning Environments), The ICT Handbook for Primary Teachers, and European Joint Research Commission
TCExam is Web-Based, platform independent, language independent (includes translations in several languages and RTL support) and conforms to W3C
Accessibility and Usability guidelines to provide equal opportunity to people with disabilities, including blind users.
TCExam automates all assessment phases: authoring, scheduling, delivering, and reporting. It's easy to use and do not require expensive hardware to run, nor additional commercial software. Users connect to the TCExam system using a common Web-browser.
TCExam can be used in many types of environments such as in education, training and development, and business settings.
The general advantages of TCExam over traditional Pen-and-Paper Testing (PPT) includes: increased delivery, administration and scoring efficiency; reduced costs for many elements of the testing lifecycle; improved test security resulting from electronic transmission and encryption; consistency and reliability; faster and more controlled test revision process with shorter response time; faster decision-making as the result of immediate scoring and reporting; unbiased test administration and scoring; fewer response entry and recognition errors; fewer comprehension errors caused by the testing process; improved translation and localization with universal availability of content; new advanced and flexible item types; increased candidate acceptance and satisfaction; evolutionary step toward future testing methodologies.
E-assessment
In its broadest sense, e-assessment is the use of information technology for any assessment-related activity. This definition embraces a wide range of student activity ranging from the use of a word processor to on-screen testing...
, Computer-Based Testing or e-exam) that enables educators and trainers to author, schedule, deliver, and report on quizzes, tests and exams. It is somewhat parallel to the written format test systems which are conducted in traditional educational institutions and helps the trainers or online tutors to design their assignments and deliver them in the form of surveys, exams, tests and quizzes.
TCExam project started in 2004 and now it is translated in 24 languages and used all over the world by universities, schools, private and public institutions, independent educators and research centers. The top-ranking and the large number of downloads reported by SourceForge repository indicates that TCExam is probably the most commonly used Free CBA Software in the world.
TCExam has been cited and suggested as preferred E-assessment
E-assessment
In its broadest sense, e-assessment is the use of information technology for any assessment-related activity. This definition embraces a wide range of student activity ranging from the use of a word processor to on-screen testing...
tool by several papers and books, including the european-funded project TACCLE (Teachers' Aids on Creating Content for Learning Environments), The ICT Handbook for Primary Teachers, and European Joint Research Commission
TCExam is Web-Based, platform independent, language independent (includes translations in several languages and RTL support) and conforms to W3C
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...
Accessibility and Usability guidelines to provide equal opportunity to people with disabilities, including blind users.
TCExam automates all assessment phases: authoring, scheduling, delivering, and reporting. It's easy to use and do not require expensive hardware to run, nor additional commercial software. Users connect to the TCExam system using a common Web-browser.
TCExam can be used in many types of environments such as in education, training and development, and business settings.
The general advantages of TCExam over traditional Pen-and-Paper Testing (PPT) includes: increased delivery, administration and scoring efficiency; reduced costs for many elements of the testing lifecycle; improved test security resulting from electronic transmission and encryption; consistency and reliability; faster and more controlled test revision process with shorter response time; faster decision-making as the result of immediate scoring and reporting; unbiased test administration and scoring; fewer response entry and recognition errors; fewer comprehension errors caused by the testing process; improved translation and localization with universal availability of content; new advanced and flexible item types; increased candidate acceptance and satisfaction; evolutionary step toward future testing methodologies.
General Features
TCExam has many features expected from a Computer-Based Assessment system, including:- Free and Open Source Software
- FLOSSFree and open source softwareFree and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
promotes software reliability and quality by supporting independent peer review and rapid evolution of source code.
- FLOSS
- Platform-independent Web-based software
- TCExam runs without modification on UnixUnixUnix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
, LinuxLinuxLinux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, FreeBSDFreeBSDFreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
, WindowsMicrosoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Mac OS XMac OS XMac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, NetWare and any other systems that support PHPPHPPHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
and a database, including most webhost providers. For users, all TCExam requires is a computer or PDAPersonal digital assistantA personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...
with a Web browser (i.e. Mozilla FirefoxMozilla FirefoxMozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
or Internet ExplorerInternet ExplorerWindows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
) and a network connection to the TCExam Web server. No additional software or specific hardware is required to use TCExam.
- TCExam runs without modification on Unix
- Interoperability
- Includes support for RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service), LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) and CAS (Central Authentication Service) modules, to directly access existing large database of users. Other authentication modules can be easily added to TCExam to meet specific needs.
- Internationalization (I18N)
- Includes translations in 24 languages and support for Translation Memory Exchange (TMX) standard, UTF-8, Unicode and RTL.
- Based on standard and open standard technologies
- PHPPHPPHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
5, MySQLMySQLMySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
, PostgreSQLPostgreSQLPostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...
, XHTMLXHTMLXHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....
, JavaScriptJavaScriptJavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
, PDF, XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
- PHP
- No expensive hardware requirements
- Has been designed to run on almost any computer and even run it on shared Web servers managed by Web hosting providers.
- Accessibility and Usability
- Generates Web interfaces that conform to the XHTML 1.0 Strict standard and W3C-WAI-WCAG 1.0 Accessibility and Usability guidelines. Accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the TCExam. TCExam has been successfully tuned to be easily used by blind users.
- Data Import and Export
- Includes some tools to directly export/import users, questions or results data using various open formats:CSVComma-separated valuesA comma-separated values file stores tabular data in plain-text form. As a result, such a file is easily human-readable ....
, XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
and PDF. The detailed results in PDF format can be automatically sent by email to each user. In addition, the database is fully documented in order to make it easily accessible by external applications to perform custom data import/export.
- Includes some tools to directly export/import users, questions or results data using various open formats:CSV
- Offline/Paper Testing with OMROptical character recognitionOptical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping...
support- Can generate printable PDF documents for pen-and-paper testing. The OMR answer sheets can be scanned and uploaded to TCExam for automatic test importing, scoring and reporting.
- Rich Content
- Uses a common mark-up language to add text formatting, images, multimedia objects (audio and video) and mathematical formulas (supports LaTeX). Generally, any object that could be rendered with a Web browser using a specific plug-in can be added to the TCExam questions, alternative answers or general descriptions. Includes a simple graphic interface with buttons to easily format the text or add external objects (i.e. images, audio files, videos, flash animations, etc ...).
- Unique test
- Questions are grouped into modules and topics. TCExam can store an unlimited number of modules. Each module can contain an unlimited number of topics. Each topic can contain an unlimited number of questions and each question can have an unlimited number of alternative answers. A TCExam test can include several modules and topics. For each module, topic or groups of modules/topics, TCExam randomly extracts a specified number of questions with certain characteristics (i.e.: question type, question difficulty and number of alternative answers to be displayed). If the question bank is large enough, TCExam may generate unique test for each user by randomly selecting and ordering questions and alternative answers. This drastically reduces or eliminates the risk of cheating.
- Paper Testing with Optical Character RecognitionOptical character recognitionOptical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping...
(OMR)- TCExam can generate printable PDF documents for pen-and-paper testing. The OMR answer sheet can be scanned and uploaded to TCExam for automatic test importing, scoring and reporting.