A few years back, a culture of remote examinations was considered futuristic. Today, approximately two years since the onset of the Covid-19 epidemic, remote examination is becoming a new standard in the field of education worldwide.
Initially, academic institutes reckoned remote examination and proctoring a compromise to paper based exams, performed in class rooms with human invigilators. Nowadays, technology is closing in on the quality gap between the traditional method of examination and online/remote examination. Lately, we have added a major feature to our TomaETest platform, allowing students to securely and conveniently use Excel to answer questions in fields such as economics and accounting.
The transition from paper-based to online examinations
Traditionally, Tomax has all been about providing solutions for paper-based exams. However, our focus has since then shifted towards the creation of an online examination platform, meant to provide a solution for all exam aspects and for all types of studies. This tremendous project should be secure in every aspect, allowing maximum flexibility while preserving simplicity of use. The TomaETest platform, together with its integrity-preserving Proctoring solutions have been intensively and successfully used for hundreds of thousands of exam events in 2021 alone, for almost all types of exams. In our effort to provide a truly holistic tool for remote examinations in all academic disciplines, we’ve lately developed the ability for our TomaETest application to use Excel during online examinations.
The secure, remote use of excel is not a no-brainer
Studies like accounting and economics intensively use Excel to practice their profession and are therefore required to examine students’ capabilities using Excel. While solutions exist to securely allow for the examination of students in these fields on computers located on-campus, Tomax is proud to be a pioneer in the field and now allow students to securely use Excel off-campus.
The TomaETest application is run within a safe and locked environment on the students’ personal computers, allowing for the use of predefined external software preinstalled on the computer. The big challenge however has been to allow for the use of the preinstalled Excel program within the TomaETest application, while disabling all Excel-enabled features to access information from the computer’s local storage or the internet. We’ve been amazed by the creativity and ingenuity of students in their attempts to breach all security measures. To their misfortune, we’re happy to report the TomaETest remains 100% secure, preserving the integrity of the exam.
The use of Excel to answer questions on our TomaETest platform is easy and comfortable: Students can read the question description like any other question, after which a button is displayed to the student allowing for the secure access to the relevant excel file. The excel file contains all relevant information provided by the teacher and students can write their answers within the excel file. At the end of the exam, all answers and student-modified Excel files are exported to the TomaGrade, where teachers can easily, quickly and accurately grade exams using advanced and personalized feedback.
Impact on Israeli academic institutes
As a global leader in online examinations and virtual invigilation, Tomax is unique in its support for examinations in the Hebrew language. Israeli academy has been known to bear great engineers and alumni in all disciplines, likely due to high standards of teaching and examination. That being the case, similarly high standards have been required of our online examination platform.
As of begin 2022, exams in the fields of accounting and economics have been successfully performed using Excel within our TomaETest application. This new addition to Tomax’s capabilities brings us another step closer to becoming the ultimate online examination tool, replacing traditional paper-based examination in all its aspects.
No compromise, simply better.
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