Building Fortress-Level Assessment Security: What 591 Accounting Faculty Taught Us About Online Assessment Integrity

 Picture this: You've just finished designing what you think is a bulletproof online course, complete with engaging content and thoughtful assessments. But then that nagging voice in the back of your head whispers, "How do I know students aren't just Googling or ChatGPTing their way through my carefully crafted exams?"

If you're an instructional designer who's ever lost sleep over assessment security, you're not alone. A comprehensive study by researchers Nas Ahadiat and Mohamed I. Gomaa surveyed 591 accounting faculty across 921 U.S. universities to understand perceptions of security and integrity in online assessments. While their focus was accounting education, their findings offer a treasure trove of insights for any of us designing secure online assessments.

🔍 The Security Hierarchy: What Faculty Really Think

The research revealed a clear "trust hierarchy" when it comes to assessment security, and the results might surprise you with how stark the differences are.

🥇 Face-to-Face Assessments: The Trusted Champion Traditional classroom assessments remain the undisputed favorite among faculty for security. An impressive 54% of faculty rated face-to-face delivery as "most secured," while only 1% considered it "most unsecured." This overwhelming confidence speaks to the power of physical presence and direct supervision that many of us take for granted when designing in-person experiences.

🥈 Hybrid Courses: The Strategic Middle Ground Here's where things get interesting for us as instructional designers. Hybrid delivery emerged as a compelling compromise, with 35% of faculty rating it as "secured" or "most secured." What makes this approach so appealing is that it offers significantly more security than fully online options while maintaining much of the convenience that makes online education attractive. It's a thoughtful balance that doesn't force educators to choose between accessibility and integrity.

🥉 Synchronous Online: The Power of Presence When faculty had to choose between online delivery methods, synchronous options won decisively. The research showed that real-time, live online assessments were perceived as significantly more secure than their asynchronous counterparts. There's something about the immediacy and live monitoring capability that creates accountability and reassurance for faculty. It captures some of the supervisory benefits of face-to-face delivery, even when mediated through technology.

📱 Asynchronous Online: The Trust Gap Challenge Asynchronous assessments faced the biggest credibility hurdle in the study. Only 12% of faculty rated this delivery mode as "secured" or "most secured," while a concerning 35% considered it "unsecured" or "most unsecured." For those of us designing online learning experiences, this represents our biggest challenge—and our biggest opportunity to innovate around security and integrity measures.

Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D.

🎯 Beyond Accounting: Security Strategies for Every Subject

While this study focused on accounting, the principles apply beautifully across disciplines. Here's how to fortress-fy your assessments:

📊 Data-Heavy Subjects (Statistics, Economics, Analytics)

The Challenge: Easy to find formulas and solutions online 

The Solution:

• Use unique, real-world datasets for each assessment
• Require students to show their work process, not just final answers
• Implement timed assessments with randomized question pools
• Consider hybrid proctoring for high-stakes exams

🧬 STEM Fields (Biology, Chemistry, Physics)

The Challenge: Standard problems with readily available solutions 

The Solution:

• Create scenario-based problems using current events or local contexts
• Use virtual labs with unique parameters for each student
• Implement peer review components that require original thinking
• Design multi-step problems where each answer builds on the previous

📚 Literature and Writing Courses

The Challenge: AI writing tools and essay mills 

The Solution:

• Focus on personal reflection and analysis rather than summary
• Use discussion forums for peer interaction and idea development
• Implement portfolio-based assessment with draft iterations
• Require students to connect readings to personal or local experiences

🏛️ Social Sciences (Psychology, Sociology, Political Science)

The Challenge: Widely available information and opinions online 

The Solution:

• Use current events that post-date available study materials
• Require primary source analysis with specific citation requirements
• Implement case study analysis with local or regional focus
• Design collaborative projects that require real-world interaction

🛡️ The Arsenal: Top Security Tools Faculty Recommend

The study revealed faculty preferences for different security strategies:

• Live Proctoring: The Heavy Artillery
• 84% rated as "secured" or "most secured"
• Best for high-stakes assessments
• Implementation tip: Reserve for final exams or certification tests to manage costs

Remote Proctoring (ProctorU): The Smart Compromise

• 74% positive rating
• More scalable than live proctoring
• Implementation tip: Provide clear tech requirements and practice sessions

Plagiarism Detection (Turnitin): The Safety Net

• 78% positive rating for written work
• Implementation tip: Use as both detection and deterrent tool

Hybrid Delivery: The Goldilocks Solution

• Best of both worlds approach
• Implementation tip: Conduct major assessments on-campus, everything else online

💡 Smart Implementation Strategies

Start with Risk Assessment

• Not every quiz needs Fort Knox-level security. Categorize your assessments:
• Low stakes: Weekly quizzes, participation checks → Minimal security needed
• Medium stakes: Module exams, major assignments → Moderate security measures
• High stakes: Final exams, certification tests → Maximum security protocols

Build Security into Learning Design

Instead of bolting security onto existing assessments, weave it into your instructional design:

• Scaffolded assessments: Build knowledge progressively so cheating becomes harder
• Application-focused questions: Test understanding, not memorization
• Personalized content: Use student location, interests, or program focus in questions

The Transparency Approach

• Be upfront about security measures:
• Explain why academic integrity matters in their field
• Share consequences of dishonesty in professional practice
• Make security measures feel supportive rather than punitive

🔮 Looking Forward: Emerging Trends

The research highlighted some fascinating patterns:

• AACSB-accredited programs showed higher confidence in security measures
• Graduate programs were more concerned about asynchronous security than undergraduate programs
• Public institutions favored face-to-face assessments more than private institutions

These patterns suggest that institutional culture and student population significantly impact security needs and perceptions.

🎯 Your Action Plan

Ready to level up your assessment security? Here's your starter toolkit:

This Week:

• Audit your current assessments using the risk categories above
• Identify which delivery mode best fits each assessment type
• Research institutional resources for proctoring and plagiarism detection

This Month:

• Pilot one hybrid assessment approach
• Create a question bank with randomizable elements
• Develop clear academic integrity policies for your courses

This Semester:

• Implement differentiated security based on assessment stakes
• Gather student feedback on security measures
• Analyze any integrity incidents to refine your approach

🐕 The Bottom Line

The research from these 591 accounting faculty confirms what many of us suspected: there's no one-size-fits-all solution to online assessment security. The key is matching your security strategy to your specific context—your subject matter, student population, institutional resources, and assessment stakes.

Remember, the goal isn't to create an adversarial relationship with students, but to design assessments so robust and engaging that cheating becomes both difficult and pointless. When students are genuinely learning and applying knowledge to meaningful problems, academic integrity often takes care of itself.

What security strategies have worked best in your online courses? Have you noticed differences between synchronous and asynchronous assessments? Share your experiences in the comments below!

________________________________________

About the Research: This post is based on "Online accounting education: How to improve security and integrity of students' performance assessments" by Nas Ahadiat and Mohamed I. Gomaa, published in the Journal of Instructional Pedagogies, Volume 24. The study surveyed 591 accounting faculty across 921 universities in the United States.

Tags: #OnlineAssessment #AcademicIntegrity #InstructionalDesign #ELearning #AssessmentSecurity #OnlineEducation #Proctoring

Posted to E-Learning Corgi by Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D. 

Quality Checklist for Training and Professional Development Courses for Associations

The members of associations and professional societies share common goals and interests; the most important of these tends to be professional advancement, enhanced knowledge, and networking.

At the center of achieving professional development is often formal training taught by experts, with credits officially awarded at the end, and records maintained by the organization.

Because the organizations represent the profession, they are under an ethical as well as a practical obligation to maintain high quality. However, it’s not always easy to develop a course template or set of criteria.

For convenience, here is a quick checklist of content and quality attributes to be sure to include in your courses.  Keep in mind that this is simply a quick checklist. If you would like a more detailed description, and an explanation of how to build the course itself for online, on-site, or hybrid delivery, there are a number of in-depth guides which I refer to at the end of this post.

Checklist of Content and Quality Attributes
Here are the essential elements that you need to include in your courses.  You may wish to formalize the list, format, fonts, etc in what is commonly referred to as a Course Design Document (CDD), which also includes instructional design guidelines. 
At the same time, you may wish to create a template.

•    Title of the course and the reason for its relevance
•    Learning objectives:  What will the measurable outcomes be?  What should the learner be able to do or demonstrate at the end of the course? What are the criteria for success?
•    Overview / brief description of the course
•    Bullet point of topics covered
•    Course materials:  Map them to the learning objectives

        * Main content
        * Engagers
        * Check your knowledge / interactive activities

•    Collaborative and individual activities:  Map them to the learning objectives
•    Assessment strategy:

•     Activities in course – do they count?  How much? Why?
•     Class participation and collaborations – How do they count?
•     Final projects or exams

• Rubric
• Minimum passing score
• Practice for multiple choice

Checklist of Instructor Qualifications 
In order to satisfy quality standards, it is important that your instructor and main subject matter expert(s) and that they have pertinent experience.
•    Relevant Experience
•    Educational qualifications
•    Experience in instruction

Checklist for Utilizing Learning Analytics and Effective Evaluations to Ensure High Quality Training:
As you review your course and the way you anticipate that the students will interact and engage with it, take a moment to develop a profile of your learners, their attributes, and learning goals. What are their needs?  Understanding the audience will help shape the following:

• Learning Outcomes
• Course outcomes
• Course Design Document to tie LOs to content and assessment
• Types of analytics that are available
• Mastery learning
• Time on task
• Collaborations
• Discussion
• Formative evaluations
• Engaging analytics (Did You Know?)
• Summative evaluations
• Assessments tying to learning outcomes

As you plan the courses, be sure to make sure that they are up to date, relevant, and they address current and emerging needs and trends.

References (please contact Susan for a free pdf of each).

Nash, Susan S. (2009) E-Learner Survival Guide. Norman, OK: Texture Press.

PDF (free)
http://zenzebra.net/elearner-survival-guide.pdf

Nash, Susan S. (2013) E-Learning Success: From Courses to Careers. Norman, OK: Texture Press.
https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Success-Courses-Careers/dp/0985008105

New Certification and Micro-Credentialing

In 2016 and continuing through the summer of 2017, a number of universities offering either a traditional face-to-face 2-year MBA, or an executive MBA, began confirming what many observed: enrollments started to drop, and students and employers commented that the cost had risen too high. Students and employers could not justify the cost due to a lack of return on investment.

People are turning to alternatives such as micro-credentialing which forms the core part of a competency-based learning program. Even Google is offering micro-credentials in its G-Suite for Education, which helps students develop skills using its cloud-based software.

Organizations are developing fast-track certification and micro-credentialing programs in response to quickly evolving industries and the need to obtain and demonstrate mastery with specific skills and knowledge.  Some of the emerging areas include new data analytics techniques, new areas of medical technology, home health care provider management, hospitality marketing, technology entrepreneurship, drones and UAV operation and analytics, urban organic farming, and more. 

Certification providers include companies with specialized experience and experts, colleges and universities, professional associations, and government agencies.

•  Assessment to determine needs for new skills and knowledge
•  Emerging needs aligned with certificates
•  Situated learning: connect knowledge and skill to real-life setting
•  Fast-Track Certification: Fewer courses, tighter timeline
•  Characteristics of a “Fast-Track” program
•  Digital badges used to motivate
•  Content quality control to assure relevance of the content
•  Assessment strategies to apply knowledge and skills in real-life situations
•  Collaboration to encourage learning from each other

Mini-credentialing and certification programs appeal to individuals who need to expand their skills, and to do It quickly. Ideally, an individual should be able to complete their training within six months. In addition, the program should be affordable so that there is a very clear positive return on investment which more than pays for itself in increased income, expanded opportunities, and enhanced adaptability.

Big Data and Machine Learning: Susan Smith Nash and seismic lines for the Gulf of Mexico

Interview with Abbas Manjee, Kiddom: Innovators in e-learning Series

Welcome to an interview with Abbas Manjee, Kiddom. Kiddom is a new platform that helps teachers pinpoint their students' needs and to track the impact of their teaching adaptations. It's a performance-based approach to teaching, but without the pain.

1.  What is your name and your relationship to e-learning?

Name: Abbas Manjee
Role: Chief Academic Officer
Relationship to e-learning: Before Kiddom, I taught high school math serving at-risk youth in New York City.

2.  What is Kiddom?

Kiddom is the easiest way to plan, assess, and analyze learning. We integrate assessment, curriculum, communication, and analytics in one easy-to-use platform.

•     Teachers save time with an integrated library of free, standards-aligned resources.
•     Teachers access beautiful, actionable reports to pivot and tailor instruction.
•     Teachers are able to commit more time to designing richer, engaging assessments.
•     Teachers can provide students feedback in real-time with built-in communication tools.

3.  How did you get the idea for Kiddom? Who are the users?

Users:
Kiddom’s users vary from elementary school teachers to high school teachers: we have tens of thousands of users spanning across K-12. We also support SPED teachers (track IEP goals), homeschoolers, and school counselors (who wish to track social emotional learning standards).

Here are a few examples:

•     A high school literacy teacher reflects on using Kiddom  
•     A teacher submitted a personal use case on EdSurge as a case study   
•     An elementary school teacher writes about her experience working with us 

History:
Three years ago, I wrapped up my fourth year of teaching high school algebra in NYC. Meanwhile, my best friend Ahsan was developing mobile math games in San Francisco. I owed him a visit, so I flew out to California that summer to spend some quality time with an old friend.

Ahsan and I talked at length about my experience teaching at-risk youth and shared our thoughts on the future of education. I was more pessimistic than Ahsan; upon hearing my day-to-day challenges, he introduced me to some innovative educational technology tools coming out of Silicon Valley, most of which I had never heard of. And while I was thankful, my immediate response was not solutions-oriented: I was already working investment banker hours.

These new tools only added work. I was not incentivized to use these “gadgets” because ultimately, I would be doing the grunt work of transferring data into my school-mandated gradebook. I was already burdened with data entry, which constrained the time I had to work with my students individually. I spent hours in Excel crunching numbers to truly understand and predict my students’ achievement.

This conversation created Kiddom: a platform for teachers to integrate content, aggregate data, and use real-time analytics. Ahsan’s previous entrepreneurship experience coupled with my teaching experience will help us develop Kiddom into an indispensable tool for  teachers to meet the demands of 21st century education.

4.  What makes Kiddom different?  How does it differ from other products in the same space? 

Great teachers working with the students most in need are constrained by archaic workflows and tools that are ineffective or redundant. As a result, these teachers inefficiently spend their precious time working in and around those constraints, expediting their burnout. If these teachers could access transformative tools that could simultaneously personalize learning, expand access to content, foster collaboration, and open a channel to share best practices and resources, they could level the playing field for students, particularly those at-risk.

We’re building Kiddom to be that transformative tool. The Kiddom platform allows teachers to track student assignments along with the standards they assess for, then access a range of analytics that inform teachers which standards need more work, which students need more help, and which students should be pushed forward. In addition, we integrate the analytics with content, so if a teacher does not want to reinvent the wheel, they are free to utilize our premium, standards-aligned content library to send resources, videos, quizzes, and more directly to students. We do not define ourselves as a learning management system, because by definition, those products tend to want to keep teachers locked into their system, whereas we encourage teachers to use third-party apps and content providers directly from our platform. We’re also 100% free.

5.  What are the instructional design concepts that are incorporated in the product?

We follow and designed the Kiddom platform based on the ADDIE model.

Standards-Based Grading Guide
Social-Emotional Learning Guide

6.  How does Kiddom tie to things we know about how people learn and cognitive psychology?

We recognize the traditional teacher-centric model (GRR / “I do, We do, You do”) does not always optimize learning for individual students. GRR has its shortcomings since it erroneously assumes all students learn and work at the same pace. At the same time, teachers devote a lot of energy to keeping their entire class engaged throughout a lesson grounded in GRR. This usually proves difficult to achieve and often creates unnecessary classroom management challenges. We believe personalizing instruction within this model is a Herculean task and so we have designed our product to make learning personal, expand access to quality content, and foster community collaboration.

Competency-Based Education: Partnerships Are a Must

Many colleges and universities are moving toward competency-based education, and developing opportunities for students to earn credit based on demonstrated mastery of skills and knowledge areas. This moves far beyond the "credit by exam" model and even portfolio evaluation, to a deeper level of skills and broader subject matter areas. 

Dr. Robert Mendenhall, President of Western Governor's University, describes competency-based education in an article that explains the reasons for its emergence and popularity: What Is Competency-Based Education? (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-robert-mendenhall/competency-based-learning-_b_1855374.html)

Capella, the College for America, and other universities are embarking on competency-based education. Other colleges, such as Excelsior College, have had credit-by-exam programs since the 1970s, and are expanding them. Whatever the form, new approaches are being developed and implemented. 

In theory, competency-based education could not be more practical. It tests an individual’s ability to apply knowledge, and can assess skill levels. Above all, it’s flexible, affordable, and does not require four or five years of slow-paced education. Further, competency-based education focuses on content that may lie outside a traditional degree program, but which is very useful in the workplace and/or for new technologies.

However, when it comes to highly technical careers that are in high demand, colleges and universities may find themselves unable to develop high-quality courses in a timely manner if they try to build them from the ground up.

To be cost-effective, timely, accurate, and relevant, the following strategies can be developed for competency-based education for high-demand technical education:

--- Up-to-date texts, which may consist of articles, manuals, reports, and software packages

--- Subject matter experts who review the content and assessment strategies

--- Instructors who are experts in the field to review materials, provide assessment services

--- An assessment strategy that privileges projects and synthesis / application of knowledge and skills

--- Partnering with professional associations or societies to take advantage of high-quality articles, peer-reviewed materials, recognized subject matter experts, professional certification.  For example, the demand for geoscientists and engineers is in no way met by traditional geology and engineering programs. The knowledge that is desired by industry is specific and can be provided by associations such as SEG, SPE, and AAPG.

--- Assessment should be coupled with reliable, relevant, and timely internships (which can be virtual) which include tasks that relate to the skills and competencies required by industry, and which are assessed in the program.

Colleges and universities can forge productive partnerships to assure that any competency-based offerings developed are legitimate, high-quality, and can forge relationships with potential employers. The most effective route involves partnering with professional associations that have a solid membership base of knowledgeable experts, and a wide array of corporations and other institutions that can provide graduates with experience and jobs. 

Ideally, the professional associations and societies that colleges and universities partner with are global, to assure the greatest number of opportunities for students, and the widest breadth of knowledge and perspectives. 

At the Great Wall of China, April 2013, after a conference on pre-Ordovician petroleum systems organized by AAPG, with sponsorship by PetroChina and other companies. 

Interview with Mac Adkins, SmarterServices: Innovators in E-Learning Series

Colleges find that they can help their students by providing support services such as tutoring and writing lab / math lab support in a distributed, online environment. The colleges and universities that are primarily online find they often need to offer a variety of courses and support services which often include links to Purdue's Online Writing Lab, the West Texas A&M Math Lab, and others including learning readiness tools, including SmarterServices.

Welcome to an interview with Mac Adkins, CEO and founder of SmarterServices, an array of services that help online students succeed.

What is your name and your relation to e-learning?

My name is Mac Adkins, with SmarterServices (http://www.smarterservices.com/) We provide four web-based services that schools use primarily in their distance learning departments. Our services measure online student readiness, collect & report perceptions of course effectiveness from students, provide a searchable database of online faculty, and provide a searchable database of neutral testing proctors.Please see the information on our Products page at http://www.smarterservices.com/products.cfm

How has your vision / mission changed over the last few years?

What caused it to expand, change, become modified?SmarterServices was founded in 2002 as DECADE Consulting (Distributed Education Consulting And Development Experts). Our initial mission was to identify common problems in leading distance education programs and then develop low-cost yet robust resources. After doing that for four years, we had crafted a "tool box" of resources that many schools were using to make their distance education programs stronger. In 2006 we changed the name of the company to eLearningToolBox to denote the set of tools that we provided to distance learning leaders.

Toward the end of that decade, schools were using our tools across the enterprise and not just in their eLearning programs. At that point we recognized that the name eLearningToolBox was a limiting descriptor. In 2010 we changed the name to SmarterServices. At the same time we also changed the name of each of our four products using a consistent naming strategy with the word "smarter" as the first part of the product name.

Since 2002 over 830,000 students from over 500 colleges, universities, K-12 schools, and corporations have used our tools and services.

What do you see as the most important emerging trend of the last 18 months?

What do you see emerging right now? How will the emerging trends of today affect tomorrow's elearning environment? In the last 18 months the emerging trend has been passing the educational buck on to the students. Because of the declining budgets of most states schools have had to reduce services and/or increase prices. The cost of education, in most cases especially online learning, has substantially increased.

What often happens is that the students then finance these increased costs through student loans. Now as those students are finishing their degree programs their student loans are coming due yet the economy is not much better and many of them are experiencing problems obtaining gainful employment with their degrees. In the next 18 months I see mobile learning as being a growing trend.

Students are expecting to be able to engage in their learning experience using small segments of time as they connect through their mobile devices such as smart phones, tablet computers, etc. Most of the major learning management systems providers are not scrambling to make sure that their interfaces and communications channels are accessible through these mobile devices.

Where do you see the biggest bright spots in education for at-risk populations?

I am not sure in which sense you are using the term “at-risk populations.” So if my response does not fit your question please let me know. I consider the term “at-risk population” to mean a subset of learners who are at-risk of not doing well in an online course due to individual attributes, skill sets, or external circumstances. It is a fact that some learners are more ready to learn at a distance than others. I think the bright spot is that schools are not realizing this and doing something about it.

Very often the first thing they do about it is using the SmarterMeasure Learning Readiness Indicator to identify the students who may be at risk. Then they are providing appropriate forms of remediation and support to make them better equipped to succeed. Finally they are using forms of business intelligence such as online course participation metrics that can be harvested from learning management systems to quickly flag students who are not participating at an acceptable level then intervening with appropriate forms of communication.

Using these three steps of assessment, remediation and monitoring schools are not longer just tossing the at-risk students into the pool and hoping that they can swim.

What do you do to assure that online assessment is the best it can be?

The only assessment that I can speak for is the online assessment that we provide – the SmarterMeasure Learning Readiness Indicator. Almost monthly we make enhancements to the assessment and/or the related services.

These enhancements almost exclusively come from suggestions for improvement from the schools and students that are using the service. In addition to this constantly evolving process every other year we have a professional psychometrician conduct an item analysis to make sure the reliability and validity of the assessment remains strong.

Interview with Sameer Bhatia, ProProfs.com: E-Learning Innovators Series

Effective assessment in an online course is not easy to achieve. Courageous developers have tackled online quizzes. It is interesting to look behind the scenes and see the challenges. Welcome to an interview with Sameer Bhatia, founder of ProProfs.com.

1. What is your name and your involvement in e-learning?

I am Sameer Bhatia, the founder of ProProfs.com, an online learning community. Prior to ProProfs I ran an IT certification products company that has been in the business of providing e-learning centered around Cisco certification products.

2. What is ProProfs.com and the learning philosophy behind it?

ProProfs.com is the knowledge FREEway, providing free resources and tools for online knowledge sharing. ProProfs is dedicated to offering new services and content that reflects the diversity of interests and topics in which today's users are engaged. Founded on the idea that knowledge should be freely available to people from all walks of life, ProProfs.com features free schools on SAT & IT certification, and offers an ever increasing portfolio of tools for social knowledge sharing including quizzes, flashcards, blogs, forums and games.

3. What is your view of how best to assess whether or not students have achieved learning outcomes in an online course?

We created ProProfs Quiz Maker (http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/) to address this need. By allowing educators to create tests, practice questions and quizzes around any topic and then embed them directly into their class websites, learning management system or e-learning courses, we allow educators to ascertain if students are achieving the learning objectives. We also aggregate the data across all attempts so a teacher can better understand what areas of learning the class as a whole needs more attention on.

4. How might assessing if students have achieved learning outcomes be different in a mobile learning course?

While content created using Quiz Maker (http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/) displays fine in most mobile browsers, we are in process of creating a special version so assessments can be distributed to a classroom easily via mobile devices such as iPhone and iPad. Watch out for this in our upcoming version.

5. what is Quiz Maker and how does it work?

ProProfs Quiz Maker ( www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/) is a free learning tool that enables educators to utilize the power of the Internet to create online quizzes and practice tests for their students. The Quiz Maker provides an easy access for students and educators, without the hassle of downloading bulky software. In addition to the ability to create custom quizzes, we also offer the largest collections of freely available online quizzes, ranging from K-12 education to topics such as technology certification, SAT, GRE and even general trivia.

6. Are there any really bad quizzes or quiz styles that should be avoided at all costs? If you don't mind, describe a very bad (ineffectual or even potentially problematic) quiz and then compare it with a very good quiz. What makes the difference? What do instructors and instructional designers need to keep in mind?

One of the key issues we have seen is the choice between long/short quizzes. Educators need to choose the test style after careful consideration. Long tests have their place in education; for example, many instructors use them during mid-terms or finals. However, to ensure that students are understanding the material, short quizzes in practice mode (with answers revealed immediately after a question is attempted) work much better. These create a stress free environment and students feel encouraged to take the quiz repeatedly. The repetition brings remembrance and helps students master the subject. Using short quizzes in conjunction with larger tests for mid/end of term, have reported strikingly positive results.
With a lot of feedback from teachers we have built features to allow secure & timed long tests as well as short quizzes that can be run in practice mode with customizable results to make learning fun. Educators however need to choose carefully based on the learning objective.

7. Do you have any plans for the future?

Our next version will be available in just a few weeks. Key features would include tracking of who took the quiz, ability to store results and provide more customization of end of quiz results.

8. Please share the name of two good books you've read lately.

The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steven Gary Blank is a must read for entrepreneurs. The other book I read recently is Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson. While both these book are not directly related to e-learning, they have had a big positive influence on how we build our e-learning products. We have stepped up on our feedback loop with educators to ensure we build something that they totally love.