Exam Management Solutions at Tufts

Solution 1:  Examsoft:

Examsoft is in use on the Boston Health Sciences campus for a variety of programs, Examsoft.com

Examsoft is in production for:

• the Physician's Assistants students at the Medical School  (www.examsoft.com/tuftspa)
  • administered by Richard Murphy, Director of the PA Program
  • using local authentication
• the M'2016 and M'2017 MD students (www.examsoft.com/tuftsmed)
  • administered by Bruce Krasnof, OIT and Ann Maderer, OEA
  • using Tufts SSO credentials with the caveat of a "tuftsmed\" domain prefix needed for the username
• the ??? Dental students (www.examsoft.com/tuftsdental)
  • administered by Jennipher Murphy, Tufts Dental School
• the ??? MBS students at the Medical School (www.examsoft.com/tuftsbiomed)
  • administered by ??

Examsoft has a few components when using their latest version:

• Examsoft.com web portal is used by Administrators and Faculty in order to load students, courses, groups, questions, exams (now called assessments), reporting.  Students also use the web portal to initially download the thick client software that they need going forward to take Exams called SofTest
• SofTest - this is the Windows and Mac thick client software that students need to download in order to take Exams.  Faculty also need SofTest in order to preview what Exams would look like.  This software is custom Examsoft software and has a proprietary auto-update features utilizing core Windows and Mac services that listen for updates
• SofTest-M - this is the iOS version of SofTest
• PrintX - is custom Examsoft software that gets installed in order to print out Exams and ????? (tbd since I haven't seen it in use yet)

Description

The Examsoft solution allows professors or administrators to create exams online.  The students download an application to their computers (SofTest), which allows them to download exams ahead of time and unlocks them at the appropriate exam time. When the software is launched, it locks down all internet access from the device.  The system is designed to be used on personal laptops and iPads.   The software can also allow "take home" exams where the laptops or iPads aren't completely locked down.

Troubleshooting Log:

• Admin auth problem:  On August 12th the "tuftsmed" site experienced issues where the Administrator accounts wouldn't authenticate via Tufts SSO easily.  It was inconsistent and very slow.  On August 13th and August 14th the Tufts LDAP team and the NOC tried to identify any Tufts-related cause to no avail.  Invalid auth attempts weren't reaching the ldap load balancers.  On August 14th in the evening Examsoft identified the culprit - a bad configuration setting on one of the load-balanced Examsoft servers
• SofTest Update not working problem: On August 14th HHSL identified a problem where their SofTest laptops weren't being auto-updated to the latest version.  Examsoft clarified that they had shut off the auto-update feature while issues were being worked out with the new version of the Examsoft portal.   Re-enabling of this feature is TBD.
• Email template problem with auth credentials:  On August 14th Bruce Krasnof identified a problem where the automatic mail-merge type email template insertion of the Examsoft domain wasn't working.  The workaround for now is to hardcode the "tuftsmed\" string in the email template, but this needs to be removed when they resolve this bug.  Jon Wayne promised to notify us prior to the fix going into production.

Solution 2: