Client

National Medical Body (Australia)

Executive Summary

This National Medical Body sets the standards for practice and advocates for better health and well-being amongst the Australian community. It is a well-respected organisation with a training program that enables busy medical practitioners to achieve set professional standards and maintain their lifelong learning goals. Member engagement and the assessment program are two of the fundamental pillars of the organisation.

Among their main priorities is to offer busy medical professionals the opportunity to complete their formal assessments within their local regions. This approach significantly minimises the time they would otherwise have to spend away from their workplaces, aligning with thegrowing expectation among the cohort to take assessments from the comfort of their homes
or work environments.

Due to the need for remote learning brought about by the pandemic, the institution needed a way to conduct fair and high integrity assessments from home or work locations anywhere in the world.

The scope of the digital assessment solution was to cater for several thousand candidates who sit the online exams across five different time zones on the same day. The platform needs to ensure integrity, such that every candidate receives the same assessment experience and the system maintains the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of the data and information. Elumina is currently their trusted assessment solution partner and now supports these high stakes exams. These exams are run flawlessly through two cycles across twenty-two venues over two days of assessments.

Introduction

The organization went to market to look for a sole service provider. The criteria included being a locally based SaaS assessment service provider, capable of supporting the administration of large-scale, multi-venue exams, and have the ability to collaborate with the organisation to ensure and establish a rigorous quality and testing process during the implementation stage. Furthermore, the service provider needed to be capable of understanding and managing the organisation’s assessment methods and approach.

Elumina’s proficiency in conducting high-stakes exams for large groups was a key factor in why Elumina’s Assess App was selected to be their platform of choice. Additionally, Elumina was able to showcase their proven experience and expertise, as well as their track record of collaborating with clients to develop assessment processes and solutions that are both stable and scalable.

The core functions and features of Elumina’s Assess App:

  • Question Development
  • Question Marking
  • Candidate Delivery
  • Statistical Exports
  • Candidate Registration
  • Remote Protoring

Aligned successfully with the organisations end-to-end assessment lifecycle requirements and Elumina was able to provide support, planning and service provision across remote invigilated exams in which students are required to use their own device (BYOD).

The Business

The organisation had on other occasions a mixed experience with online exams. The over-arching goal was to grow confidence from within the candidate base and the senior stakeholders group that online exams would be run successfully. Their approach was to re-evaluate the market looking for a trusted technology provider willing to take a ‘small steps’ approach as part of the implementation to keep expectations and service capability aligned. This was referred to as the ‘zero error’ approach.

The Challenge

The key for the organisation and Elumina was to create a program of works that addressed the change management issues of moving manual exams to a new online assessment platform and remained highly focused to keeping stakeholders aligned to the vision. The goal was to create confidence that the Assess App solution would concurrently service thousands of candidates across multiple locations.

CREATING AND DELIVERING ALL TYPES OF ASSESSMENTS WITH EASE USING

Elumina's Assess App

Finding a Solution

After deep dive demonstrations and case study reviews, the Assess App product capability was given the green light by the client. The key to success was not just the product, but an implementation approach with sufficient checks and balances to prove the end solution was going to be reliable, scalable and sustainable on exam day. From the first exam day of the assessment timetable to the last exam day, given each exam day is a twelve to fourteen hour period.

The solution included a framework that:

  • Delivered a series and variety of different trail exams to build confidence.
  • Delivered performance testing beyond the reasonably expected number of candidates.
  • Delivered testing across venues to understand the basic requirements at each venue and the candidate PCs (e.g. internet speed/latency, browser versions, etc).
  • Delivered testing of the ‘offline sync and recovery’ processes for when a candidate has a poor internet connection.
  • Delivered security testing to ensure that the environment was highly secure and protected.

Implementation and results

The implementation project was delivered within fifteen months. This timeline was achievable as the core functions of the Assess App platform was suitable and fit for purpose. The key focus areas were ensuring the smooth facilitation of customer change management, testing and trial exams. To date, the organisation has successfully run over 10,000 online assessments.

The feedback on the installed platform’s performance, was that there were no issues. The platform handled all online exams, and seamlessly managed the High Volume data downloads of x-ray, scans and images. The planning and preparations were so successful that the support operations team did not need to activate the offline recovery mode, which mitigates against a candidate having a poor internet connection.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY
PUBLICLY ABOUT ELUMINA?

We have been long-time believers in the benefits of providing online assessments to candidates and across our organisation. We needed a partner that would work with us to deliver really high stakes exams using a trusted approach and a reliable, scalable and secure platform. At each step of the journey, Elumina has been there to support us on key decisions and in testing the processes and assessment experience for both candidates and examiners. To date we have been pleased with the successes we have achieved using the Assess App platform.

About Elumina

Elumina is an Australian owned, education technology (EdTech) company providing digital assessment solutions for global institutions, governments and corporations. We transform how assessments are delivered by taking test delivery into the digital age and inspire lifelong learning with the power of scalable, customisable online assessment software. Our 100+ team members help deliver 500,000+ high stake assessments per annum supporting medical colleges, universities, professional associations and government bodies.
Our mission is now to power education outcomes for 50 million learners globally by 2025.

ELUMINA AIMS TO POWER
EDUCATION OUTCOMES FOR
50 MILLION LEARNERS
GLOBALLY BY 2025.