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About iXam

new assessment possibilities

Have you ever thought about measuring the learning progress of your pupils or students by modern methods? Not by letting them fill out countless exam sheets and manually correcting them - and not by creating online tests or activities with just Multiple Choice or True/False questions types?

Then iXam might be the solution for you.

iXam is a cloud-based examination system, properly designed for chemical education, but also suitable for other subjects. iXam was originally based on LibreEOL, an open source project initiated by Osvaldo Gervasi (University of Perugia). While this software solution is already a very good product for examing students, we had to extend and modify the code to give us much more flexibility in the usage of the product and to create new questions types needed within several projects. After some time the code has been fully rebuildt from scratch and is now using the Neos Flow Webframework. The code is based on PHP and Javascript, and allows us to generate even more difficult answering possibilities.

Have a look at the question types we currently support and other features and feel free to request a demo test.

We are looking forward to get in contact with you.

 

Question Types

new possibilities how to answer an exercise

Common asessment systems support serveral question types out of the box - like multiple choice, true/false, numeric, essay and others. But chemists have many different kinds to solve a problem, and thus many different ways to answer a question.

Just think about drawing an organic structure as result of a question, if the candidate knows the difference between an sN1 and sN2-substitution. Or a reaction equation of a complex titration sequence. These questions can not be created as multiple choice questions (or similar), since you would have to create a limited number of possible answers.

We extended the system with some modules to allow such special question types. And the system is open! So if you have an idea about a new way to describe a solution for a given problem, just contact us at office@ixam.cloud and we will answer you, if this particular type can be implemented as well.

RKT

Reaction equation

Equation of redox reactions or other (simple) reactions can be entered using a small HTML-editor. The results of the candidates are compared against given answers, where the order of the educts/products are not taken into account, as well as some other common innaccurate writing styles.

NUM

Random numeric

Arithmetical problems are described by a short text with variable numeric values. So even if the neighbour of the candidate is shown the same exercise, it's not a good idea to copy his numerical results, since he is using different values.

The result entered by the candidate will be compared against the online calculated results. The decision, if an answer is correct, can be based on a range of values around the calculated value, either in absolute values (e.g. 34.5 +/- 0.2) or by percentage deviation (34.5 +/- 1%), to avoid misinterpretation due to the usage of constants (molmasses, physical constance, etc) with different significance.

CHE

Chemical structure

If you want to check if your students understood the concepts of various organic mechanismen, you can use our structure drawing question type.

Students enter their answer by drawing a molecule structure using a JavaScript-editor and answers are compared against given answers.

MOL

Molecular formula

Molecular formulars can be entered in any order and with or without group annotations. Thus e.g. Ba(OH)2 and BaH2O2 will both accepted as correct answers

TOF

True/False and Yes/No

Simple questions which can be answered with true or false statements (or yes or no statements)

MMC

Multiple choice

The candidate has to select the correct one(s) out of given answers. Questions can be configured that only 1 answer is correct (single multiple choic) or that 2 or more answers are correct (multiple multiple choice), wrong answers will result either in 0 points or even negative points.

TXT

Essay questions

Candidates answer this question type by writing a longer text. SInce we use a WYSIWYG-editor you can format the text bold, italics, in different colors, using tables and a selection of greek letters.

Request a Demo

try it out

To get an impression of our examination system, feel free take a test yourself. You can run one test a day.

If you are employee or student at an austrian university/college or member of the eduGAIN-Network you can directly access the demo. Login using your Google-Credentials is also possible.

Members of ACOnet/eduGAIN:
If you are employee or student at an austrian university or college (or a member of an eduGAIN-institution) you can access the demo without prior registration. Just click here to login with the credentials at your home institution and a test will be scheduled to you.

Login using your Google-Credentials:
We also offer the possibility to login using your Google account. There is no need to pre-register, just open this page to run your demo test.

or register as test taker:
Please provide us with your full name and your email-address in the following form.

An email will be sent to your email account with the link to the online test. After taking the exam a full report will be sent to you as well. Please note that you can only run one exam a day!

Request a demo

Other features

further extensions

There are some additional modules built around the core system to achieve a smooth examination session and to handle easy reports to the candidate and examiner.

Webcam surveillance

Examinations can be supervised using a videoconferencing software (BigBlueButton).  There is no need to have a host/moderator for monitoring the sessions, because the candidates are automatically assigned to private meeting rooms, where they are monitored by their webcam (and microphone) during their examination.

After finishing the test the videofile is analysed by a special face recognition software to find situations, where the candidate may behave unexpected and he/she is suspected of cheating. This feature is currently in beta testing.

Reports as PDF

Reports of the exams are prepared immediately after finishing the test. These reports are forwarded to the candidate and to the examiner using different settings, you have the possibility to decide which information to display - only the overview with grading, or with the question text and their own answer, or even with the information what the correct answers would have been.

Online Annotation of Reports

Reports of tests can be annotated online, giving you the possibility to correct your exams in an easy way without printing them out. Even more, you can distribute the working as a proofreader to more colleagues, and you can manage collaboratorive work - where every examiner evaluates only the questions of his expertise. This feature is currently in beta testing.

Exam Templates

Every exam can be assigned a unique template. This gives you the possibility to achieve corporate identity.

Authentication

Authentication (to do an exam) can be connected to your university/corporate login system via SAML20, so your users do not have to register manually.

As an alternative we can create special private links to start a particular exam, or even to do exams anonymously if this fits your special situation.

Contact

get in contact with us

iXam - Examination System

ChemIT e.U.

DI Heinz A. Krebs
Jubiläumsstrasse 17/2
2352 Gumpoldskirchen / Austria

office@ixam.cloud