The academic community has been, from the beginning, one of the early adopters of Zoho products and technologies. So today we are happy to announce a major update to Zoho Challenge, our online software that automates the process of creating, distributing, administering and evaluating tests. Zoho Challenge 2.0 includes a slew of new features and enhancements that make it easier for educational organizations to evaluate candidates.
New Workflows and Collaboration
Among the major improvements in Zoho Challenge are the radically improved workflows and collaboration that make test creation and scoring easier and more time-effective. For example, Zoho Challenge now includes test templates and the ability to re-use a test after it has been administered. In addition, multiple evaluators can work on a single batch of tests, and different Professors/Classes can share and use each others' question banks. Zoho Challenge 2.0 supports both automatic and manual evaluation of tests. In the case of manual evaluation, an "answer sheet" or "answer key" can be created along with the test, so that evaluators can fairly and consistently assign scores.
Beyond the usual question types (multiple choice, single choice, open question, fill in the blank, true/false, etc.), Zoho Challenge now also allows test creators to embed multimedia content in questions to support those cases where the questions refer to an image (or video!). It also allows educators to split tests in sections and to create multi-part questions.
Improved Access Controls
Zoho Challenge also includes better test access controls. It now supports 'Coded Tests'. This allows test administrators to create special access codes for their online test and give access to its to students without an email account and without the need to sign-up for a Zoho Account. In addition, you can restrict test-taking to certain IP addresses - for example, the school's library, inside the campus but not in the dorms. That's not all. Teachers can define when the test opens/closes, how long is lasts,
...but it's not just for schools and students
Finally, it's also worth nothing that Zoho Challenge is not only for a school situation with students, teachers and regular quarterly evaluations. Online testing is also quite useful for many companies and organizations who use standardized tests to both screen job candidates and also for continuous learning of their employees. For example, one of our retail customers uses Zoho Challenge so that their front-line employees can test their knowledge against the most commonly asked customer questions about the newest products and their features.
And we are happy to announce that with this update Zoho Challenge came out of beta and now has paid plans. We of course continue to have a very generous free plan.
We hope you will find the new Zoho Challenge useful!
Rodrigo
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