Euan’s Blog

What is it about assessment that every piece of software remotely associated with learning needs to have some form of ‘assessment’ built in.  

Before building InQuizitor we spent a lot of time in secondary schools trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to train kids in some well intentioned but somewhat clunky software.  It was a vast piece of software which was so complex and accurate it could probably assess the circumference of a fleas rear from 50 metres.   Did purchasers ask if the software did assessment? Yes!  Did anyone ever find the time to use it? Nope.  

At this time, we realised that the market was inundated with fantastic and easy to use assessment software, built by great companies.  We also came to the conclusion that there was very little software built to re-engage and motivate the kids doing poorly at assessments and  examinations that the UK school system requires.   Despite being a terrible waste of bright kids the need to re-engage and motivate these kids is paramount for schools to increase the schools’ overall success and performance. 

So why oh why oh why when we build a piece of software designed to get kids excited about study…..so much that they spend hours revising physics, biology and maths….when in the past they havn’t picked up a book…..why do people require reporting to ’show it works’.  If you want to assess a child…use the myriad of great assessment software already available and purchased 7 times over by your LEA…..after you’ve let them play with InQuizitor.

Let InQuzitor do its job as a study buddy and motivator.   If a child who has shown no interest in studying spends 80 minutes playing InQuizitor to get a high score by memorising a bunch of French verbs….you dont need to measure that to prove it works.   The trouble is, if we build an assessment engine for InQuizitor, it becomes a tool for the teacher not the child and my fear is many kids will say ’ oh its just another test’. 

 However, despite all that we built InQuizitor around the QTI standard, knowing reasoned argument was often unlikely to sway many educators hamstrung by a purchasing policy which has a tick box saying ’Does the software have reporting functions to measure it’s effectiveness?’,  so we launch our reporting module in January. ….  but I really hope you never need to use it.  

Let a child  tell you they scored 4.2 milllion on Physics GCSE…..that should be all the asessment you need..