Monday 23rd April saw a total of 73 first year medics, half of each of two sittings, take their voluntary assessment in Organisation of the Body on Rogo while the other half of each sitting used QuestionMark Perception as normal.
After a longer than usual introduction (see below), to explain the differences between this and ‘normal’ online assessments, we started the group in two halves, approximately 10s apart. There was no perceptible delay despite the fact that both application and db are running on one >3yr old server.
This was a great outcome given that we very nearly abandoned this test of Rogo at the last minute because of serious potential problems – one to do with server errors after amending ‘locked’ questions, the other to do with paper ‘types’. Disaster was averted by my colleague Jon Mason, who spotted and corrected both problems just in time.
Extra instructions at the beginning of the assessment:
“You are in the very privileged position today to be the first group of students to try out a new assessment system, Rogo. This works in more or less the same way as the ‘normal’ system, Perception, except that:
1. The assessment will not submit itself at the end, we will ask you to click ‘Finish’ after 45 minutes;
2. Because it doesn’t time itself, I will tell you when there are 5 minutes remaining to you. There is a clock at the bottom left of your screen – I suggest you make a note of your start time as you would with a normal exam.
3. The questions will be presented on 6 ‘screens’ which you can move between (backwards and forwards) using the controls at the bottom right.
4. When you go back to a screen you have previously visited, unanswered questions will be highlighted in pink.
5. Please make sure you do not click the ‘Finish’ button until you have answered all questions as you will not then be able to return to them.
6. We have appended three questions to the end of the assessment which ask for your thoughts on this new software. You do not have to answer these but we would be grateful for any feedback you can give us – it will help us to decide whether this is a viable alternative to the existing system.”