Not every user/organization has the time or the resources to practice what is described in this topic. However, the quality of your tests and resulting test data will be affected by the practices and policies you establish now. If you expect to be able to rely on the resulting test data, we recommend some level of test review prior to publishing your tests.

Before reviewing this topic, we assume you have:

Activation and Publishing

All tests need to be activated before they can be taken. As a test author, you must activate a test in order to evaluate it. When you are ready to present it to your test taking audience, you need to publish it.

Master Course and Tests

Ideally, we recommend creating one or multiple "master" course. A master course can be organized in a variety of ways: knowledge domain, department, instructor, etc. The tests in a master course are accessible only to you and designated evaluators. Your test-taking audience never see these tests.

Create, save, activate and evaluate your tests under a master course. Once your evaluation is complete and you are ready to publish your test, open and save it (File > Save As) into a Class/Course containing your published tests and enrolled users. If, even after having evaluated your test, you encounter problems; review Test Editing Options as a next step. In general, you do not want to edit a published test that has been taken as it corrupts your test data.

By "editing a published test" we mean adding or deleting questions/answers, altering scoring, or changing randomization to name a few. Simple changes such as spelling or grammatical changes do not corrupt your data.

Tester

By now we assume you have had a training session or discovered that you take a test using the Tester client. Which tester client you use depends on which product you use.

TG Desktop and LAN installations use the Windows, Tester client software. The Tester shortcut is located under Start > Programs > Test Generator (II) > Tester.

If using TG Web, you access your tests through a web browser. The web Tester is not installed software on your computer, it is software activated when you type in, or link, to a specific address on your Intranet or over the Internet. Where/how you access the web Tester is determined by the type of TG Web account you are using. TG Web accounts are either hosted within your organization or on our servers.

Taking/Evaluating Your Test

As a test author, you can login to Tester and take/evaluate your test without having to enroll in the Class. Log out of TG and log back in to Tester using your TG ID and password. If you try to log in to Tester while still logged-in to TG, you get an Already Logged In prompt. Click OK to proceed or close TG and proceed with your Tester login.

If you want to remain logged-in to TG while taking the test, enroll one of the guest user profiles (see the Sample Class example in the Tree Directory) or create your own "tester" profile. That way, you can log in to Tester while keeping TG open. Note: A test cannot be edited in TG while it is being taken in Tester and vice versa.

  1. Log in to Tester, select/open your test. During your review, record any textual, formatting or test behaviors changes. Exit Tester by clicking the Finish button.

  2. Re-open the test in TG. Make your corrections, edit the copy and/or modify the question parameters/test properties as needed. Save your changes, close the test.

  3. Retake the re-edited test by logging in to Tester. Repeat this process until you are satisfied the test is ready to be published.

Note: TG grades each test-taking session and records a score result under the test's Scores tab. If you take/modify your test more than once, this test data becomes corrupt and should be deleted after each test-taking event.

To delete an evaluation test event/score, select/highlight the event row and press the Delete button.

Publishing Your Test

Your testing event may or may not involve a single "classroom" test, given on a specific day/hour. Your test takers may be scattered across the globe, taking tests on different days, at different hours. Test Generator's test properties enable you to manage this process. If you need some assistance matching your test enrollment/delivery requirements with TG's delivery options, we do offer alternate approaches. Contact us.

Note: Enrolled users are eligible to take any active test under a course. However, it is also possible to control enrollment at a test level, see Enrolling Test Takers in Tests.

Best Practices

If, even after having evaluated your test, you encounter problems, we recommend reviewing the help topic, Test Editing Options as a next step. In general, you do not want to edit a published test that has been taken—doing so will corrupt your test data.

At this point, you have created, evaluated, edited and saved your test.

Option 1 - assumptions/checklist

Option 2 - assumptions/checklist

Option 3 - assumptions/checklist

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