Simulated Paper Testing

An important part of the exam experience is gaining critical thinking skills that can be applied to all aspects of life. Traditional paper tests offer students the freedom to move freely through the exam, confront difficult problems first or come back to them later and review their answers before submission. Unfortunately this is where most online testing solutions fall short. The majority of exam solutions available only offer students a one way trip from problem one to exam submission. Effectively eliminating students freedom of choice.

As educators, we believe that the critical thinking skills students gain from the traditional paper testing experience are a vital part of second language acquisition. Babel-U-Exams reflects that belief with a simulated paper testing environment that gives students full access to all problems from start to finish with no in-exam page reloads. Students can move freely through the exam, change their answers at any time and review their responses before submission. This allows students to improve their testing skills with every attempt and bridges the gap between in-class and online learning.

Setting Limits

Babel-U-Exams gives you control over exam time limits, retake cool-down period and the number of times a user can retake an exam. Since exams can be created with or without these limits, it is easy to customize the experience to fit your needs. Additionally these controls make it possible to replicate almost any type of language proficiency examination. As well as control bandwidth and database usage. Another great feature is the ability to allow users to pause exams and restart them at a later date.

Automatic or Manual Grading 

As ESL educators, we understand that not all language problems have just one right response. That is why the Babel-U-Exams component gives you the choice between automatic or manual grading of user responses. Babel-U-Exams can be configured to send a notification to the administrator when a manually graded exam is submitted. Additionally administrators can define problems with multiple acceptable responses which will be taken into consideration when automatic grading is utilized.  Set point values on a per section and a per problem basis, which allows you to award additional points for more difficult problems while at the same time eliminating the need to set the point value for every problem in the database.

Level Specific Problem Filtering

Babel-U-Exams level filtering system allows administrators to create exams that only include problems within the specified level, include all problems with levels “less than or equal to” the exam level or include all problems with levels “equal to or greater than” the exams level. This allows the administrator to easily control both the number of problems and the difficulty of the problems in each exam.

Going Beyond Simple Quizzes

Babel-U-Exams goes beyond simple skill assessment. With features like flash performance charts, fully review-able exam results and response commenting, Babel-U-Exams provides language educators with a powerful set of tools to help identify e-learners weak areas and provide additional educational opportunities to their students.

Flash performance charts

Learning from the mistakes of the past is an important part of the language learning process. Babel-U-Exams maximizes such learning opportunities with both visual representations of user performance over time and fully reviewable exam results. Although the flash charts are designed to look great out-of-box, we included more than 40 variable settings that make it possible to customize almost every aspect of the flash charts to match the look and feel of your site.

Review-able Exam Results

Users have access to fully review-able exam results. Administrators can add additional content to exams that will only be presented in the results review. This gives you the power to address common mistakes students make, add links to relevant content, or even provide translations of problems to improve student comprehension. This combined with performance charting and personalized commenting features creates a unified learning experience that brings added value to both your site and your membership base.

Response Commenting

From our experience learning Japanese, we can tell you that nothing is more valuable to a second language learner than solid feedback from their instructor. With this in mind we included the ability to add personalized comments to user exam responses. This features brings you even closer to the in-class experience and gives you a direct method to address gaps in students understanding.

Reuse, Reduce and Recycle

One of the most difficult parts of hosting online tests is the bandwidth pressure placed on the server and the large amount of data forced through the database. Babel-U-Exams puts you in full control with built-in retake limits, and retake delay features. This components entire design reflects our waste-not-want-not philosophy with reusable problem pools, reduction of duplication and optimized database queries that speed performance.

Reusable Problem Pools

Babel-U-Exams was designed to reduce work and maximize possibilities. Our design allows you to organize problems into problem groups. These groups can then be linked to unlimited exams. This not only reduces stress on the database, it also allows for dynamic randomization of exam content and insures that students  learn the material and not just the problems in the exam.

Any Problem in Any Format

Problems created in Babel-U-Exams can be displayed in any of the supported formats. This allows you to write once and reuse in an unlimited number of exam variations. Babel-U-Exams currently supports all standard problem formats and allows you to easily create Multiple Choice, Multiple Answer, Short Answer, and Short Essay. Problem texts are HTML Enabled which allows you to easily add pictures and links to problem content and with the native Joomla WYSIWYG Editor you don't have to know HTML to get the most out of Babel-U-Exams.

Unlimited Options

Most exam components limit the number of possible options each problem can have or require you to create multiple database records for each options. This forces you to choose between flexibility or performance. Babel-U-Exams database structure breaks the mold and gives you the freedom to  add multiple correct responses and multiple incorrect options. Problems can have 3,4,5 or more possible options without senseless database clutter. We give you even greater control with  maximum option limits per section.

Compatibility Tested

Babel-U-Exams has been compatibility tested in all major browsers. Including I.E. 6+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari. This insures that your exams are accessible by anyone with a JavaScript enabled browser. In addition Babel-U-Exams is coded in a clean CSS driven DIV based design that follows the W3C standards for rich internet applications. Following the W3C standards isn't easy, but in doing so we insure that every aspect of Babel-U-Exams can be customized using cascade styling. 

HTML Enabled

Exams, sections and problems created using the Babel-U-Exams are HTML enabled and by utilizing the native Joomla WYSIWYG editor, administrators can include links, images and more to their exams regardless of their level of HTML proficiency. This makes it easy to create exams that fit the look and feel of your site. As well as removing unnecessary content boundaries or complicated formatting requirements found in other exam components. (Native Audio/Video coming soon)

100% Translatable

Babel-U-Exams was designed to be 100% translatable. Babel-U-Exams can be translated into any language by translating one file for the front-end and two files for the back-end. Babel-U-Exams takes full advantage of the native Joomla language control functions and since the translation files are in plain text .ini format they can be edited with any text editor. Check out the documentation for a step-by-step tutorial.

Exam Features

Sections

Problems

Results

More Coming Soon!

Version 1.0.8.2 Released
12-19-2011

• Fixed: issue with timer that caused an error time limit was reached.
• Fixed: display errors that effected FireFox browsers.
• Other: minor aesthetic improvements.