5 Considerations when choosing an assessment platform

Weighing up your options when selecting an assessment platforms comes down to 5 key things…

Choosing an online assessment platform can be a difficult decision. With such a notable rise in the number of edtech companies offering e-assessment technology, how can organizations ensure that they are investing in the best assessment platform for their needs?

When it comes to choosing an assessment platform, there are 5 things that should always remain as major influencers in your decision-making. After all, online assessment platforms can, initially, be an expensive investment for your company, meaning that this decision can be a crucial organizational decision.

When selecting an assessment platform, the key rule of thumb should always be to ask yourself if the platform allows you to use your content in the most effective and influential way possible. Your students – whether they’re at kindergarten level or professional development level – should benefit from the introduction of your chosen assessment platform, as it should dramatically increase engagement levels and improve your students’ learning outcomes.

Choosing the right assessment platform

1) A robust and scalable platform

While learning content is certainly one of the key pieces of a successful online assessment, the actual technology itself is vital to learning success. Scale is definitely something worth considering when making your assessment platform decision. Can the platform scale to deliver hundreds, thousands, and even millions of assessments all at the same time? Can it prove its reliability? Performance is an extremely important area of online assessments, yet is often overlooked and taken for granted.

Before signing the dotted line, make sure to address any concerns around scalability. Information on the learning platform’s historical uptime/downtime of should always be considered in the process.

2) Ease of use

Today’s assessment platforms offer a wide range of functionalities that, while being extremely powerful, can often be overwhelming to tech newcomers. Particularly in cases where teachers are going to be using your learning product, it’s important for them to be comfortable with the technology and be able to use it at ease.

Consider assessment platforms that, while including advanced functionalities (including Technology-Enhanced Items) that you may require for complex subject matter such as chemistry and math, also include the ability to simplify the assessment authoring tool. This ensures that whether your users require a quick assessment or something to assess their students’ knowledge of more complicated subject matter, your assessment platform remains suitable.

3) Assessment analytics & reporting

While ensuring your assessment platform has the essential components required to create and deliver your online assessments, it is equally as important that it has analytic and reporting tools to help you gain the most from your assessment data.

Finding an assessment platform that allows you to easily create and analyze student results is essential. Educators need to be able to provide timely, actionable insights to their students. Data can be complex and overwhelming, so look for a platform that simplifies the process. Pre-formatted reports can be useful to visually analyze a student’s performance against their class, district, or State.

Always ensure your learning product is supported by a smart, sophisticated infrastructure that helps you deliver an exceptional online learning experience from start to finish.

4) A Strong support system

When you choose to build your learning platform using an advanced assessment platform, one of the advantages is that your organization’s time and resources can be spent on the areas that differentiate your product – whether that’s learning content or the overall user experience. While this means you’re at an advantage as you can concentrate on your unique selling points, it’s essential to look at the support system that’s being offered by your assessment platform.

Some essential questions to ask are:

• Will you have a designated support contact?
• What times can you access the support team?
• Is documentation readily available should you need it?

Finding an assessment platform that’s a good fit for your learning product is one thing, but ensuring that you can get the most out of it is another.

5) Assessment customization

In the world of e-learning, one size certainly does not fit all. When choosing an online assessment platform for your organization to leverage, customization is everything. A flexible solution that can be easily integrated with your technology is of huge benefit.

Look for an assessment platform that blends seamlessly into your product. At the end of the day, you want your learning product to feel like your learning product. It’s worth researching online assessment tools that can be styled and branded to match your own.