Proxams Documentation

Introduction

Proxams is an advanced computer based testing platform with rich features for easy administration of tests and assessments online and offline.

Proxams is designed to handle all forms of multiple choice questions including single answer questions and multiple answer questions, courseive-based questions, theory-based questions and practical/procedural-based questions.

Proxams allows the addition of a third-party examiner that logs in and marks/grades assigned exercises.

The platform is lightweight and is intended for desktop and mobile users to either take a one-off test or as a practice centre for repetitive tests.

Proxams allows the combination of different courses that make up a single exercise and gives the option to choose the maximum number of questions from a particular course. The courses are arranged as tabs for easy navigation.

An administrator can create a bank of questions and these questions can be randomly selected for different users.

Proxams offers thousands of preloaded standard industry-based questions and answers for different disciplines. This can be easily used to set-up a full-fledged CBT exercise for any purpose in less than 5minutes.

The order of questions can be shuffled and also the answers if the administrator wants.

You can equally choose to display a user score at the end of test or just show a successful submission page.

Proxams can be used by schools for examination or tests, companies for recruitment aptitude test exercises, test administrators or vendors and individuals as a practice platform.

Schemes, Courses and Exercises

To efficiently deploy the features of Proxams, these three terms need to be understood correctly:
1. Scheme: A scheme is name of the program or the exercise you want to carry out e.g. Recruitment Aptitude Tests, Promotional Examinations, Admission Screening Test, First Semester Examinations etc.
2. Courses: A course is the name of the topic or area that will contain the questions pertaining to them e.g. Verbal Reasoning, Numerical Reasoning, Spatial Reasoning, Management Science etc.
3. Exercises: An Exercise is a combination of one or more tests to form an examination. Exercises are the unique groups that will write different test(s) assigned to them. For example, Engineering Category may be writing verbal reasoning and mechanical reasoning tests while Management Department may be writing verbal reasoning and financial analysis tests.
A scheme has to be added, then test(s) and the test has to be assigned to an exercise.
Under Add Scheme, you can specify the start and end date of the program.
Under Add Course, Name the test e.g. English, Mathematics etc. Enter instructions that candidates should note before starting the exam.
Under Add Exercise, You must have created a user group that will take this exercise before setting up the exercise. After that, enter the name of the exercise, select a user group, grading system (points or percent), pass mark, questions per page, the different courses that will make up the exercise, show score at the end of test, allow test to be taken more than once, show correct answers, you can choose to either shuffle the questions or answers, the maximum number of questions to be chosen for that particular test, the number of questions to be displayed per page, the total time for the test and the marks or points per question, choose to shuffle the order of tests, choose to show or hide calculator, choose to number the test questions separately or continuously.

It is a good practice to choose a date before the actual date of the test in setting up the scheme. This is to ensure that differences in timezones or system time doesn't affect the commencement of the test. Also, a scheme is paused by default. Once you're done setting up, click the start button under Schemes to start it. Exercises are set running by default. To pause or stop it, Under the Exercises tab, scroll to the right and click on the start/pause button. A paused scheme or exercise will not be seen by user(s).

Questions

Proxams provides a flexible interface to load your questions to the platform.
Questions can be added manually or by bulk upload.
For bulk upload, questions can be multiple-optioned or a boolean type question or courseive-based questions. A maximum of five options is allowed per question.
A text editor is used to format your questions for easy understanding by your users.

Questions with multiple answers are also enabled and the administrator will have to tick the right options from the Correct Answer field.
Images, charts and graphics can be added into your questions.
You can provide explanations for your answer so that your users can see how you arrived at a particular answer. This is most useful for administrators using the platform as practice or mentorship centres for their subscribers.

For bulk upload, your questions and their answers would have to be prepared with a Excel Sheet (Recommended) or a CSV editor. Download Excel format here and CSV format here.
Only these two formats are allowed and questions should be prepared in line with the sample formats above to avoid errors.
Images, charts and graphics are not allowed in the bulk upolad options but uploaded questions can be edited to add those images manually.

For bulk upload of courseive-based questions, the correctly spelt answers should be in the option boxes and the Correct Answer Column left blank. Proxams presents input boxes to the user to type the correct answers against the dashes in your questions. Kingly make sure your dashes (-------) are between 5 to 9 strokes ( and not more than 10). A marking algorithm of mark subtraction exists depending on the degree of similarity between the right answer and the user's answer. Theory and practical based questions are not automatically marked but you can assign them to an examiner for marking and grade collation is automatic.

Results

Test results and scores in proxams are presented in both tabular and graphical forms.
The tabular form gives a breakdown of the user data, the exam score, the number of right answers and wrong answers, the number of unanswered questions. You can also view the test performance detail and the candidate picture.

Right answered questions have the green check icon.
Wrong answered questions have the red 'X' icon and the correct option for that question is ticked with green check icon.
Unanswered questions have the grey-shaded 'O' icon and the correct option is also given in green check icon.
There is an option to print out your results in PDF. This will prepare the test result of your candidates in a customized form and make it available for printing.

Printed result sheet is prepared with your organization name and logo as a letterhead.

The graphical form of result presentation makes use of two charts: the bar chart and the dough nut charts.
It categorizes the performance by scores of students and groups them using bars and arcs respectively. The range is 0-10, 20-30....90-100.
This gives a visual aid of the average performance of your users.

Proxams gives you the option to print test results in descending order of scores, exam numbers and names. Also, you can print out the progress report to see how each candidate answered it each. This can be printed in PDF serially according to the questions or by default i.e. according to the order of questions the user answered if the questions were shuffled for each user.

Users

Proxams makes process of inputting candidates data very easy. To upload users, they must be assigned to a user group. This is like a class of all users that will be taking a particular exercise.
Under User's Management, click on 'Add Group' to add a user group and then upload users to the group. Two options available are: manual input and bulk upload.
The Manual option allows you to input the candidate name, exam no and upload picture.

The bulk upload option is for mass uploading of candidates data well formatted in a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet. The file must be formatted according to the sample given here.

If users photos are needed, it is important to ensure that the file names of the photos or images correspond to the names in the Image column of the spreadsheet.

The Excel file is selected from your computer and uploaded by clicking the 'Upload Names' button.

The folder containing the photos should be uploaded completely using the 'Choose Photos' button and selecting all the pictures in the folder.

Candidates or users for your exercise can be viewed, edited or deleted as may be needed. Also, the list of candidates can be compiled in PDF and printed.

Its always good to confirm that you're on the right user groups.

The maximum number of users to upload depends on the total number of users you purchased during sign up or in subsequent user limit top-ups. If you are to attach user passports, ensure that the saved names of the passport is the same name entered in the Image Column of the Excel file containing the user details. Then, in the same page and same time you just finished uploading users, click on the 'Choose Photos' button and select all the passports once and then upload photos.
DO NOT leave the page immediately, wait for at least 1 minute after notification that images have been uploaded.

Verification

The verification feature of Proxams helps to authenticate candidates before granting them access to the examination venue.

This is helpful in situations where candidates would have to converge at a particular venue for the exam and manual verification is needed.
It works in two ways: Manually or with a barcode.

The manual option works by typing the user Exam ID and clicking the verify button.
It will bring out the registered details and picture of the candidate and course to confirmation by the administrator. This is a measure against impersonation for physical exams.

The barcode option is activated by clicking the 'use Barcode Scanner' checkbox and beaming the scanner on the unique barcode present in the candidate's exam slip.
Once it's a valid barcode generated for the candidate during registration, it will fetch the candidate's details.

All barcode formats and standards (1D,2D) are accepted.

Note: The barcode scanner option assumes that your users Examination or Application IDs are encrypted in barcode format. If not, kindly use the manual option to authenticate.

Pricing and Plans

Proxams is quite affordable and aims to reduce the stress in organizing examinations and possible compromise in the hand of examiners.
Pricing depends on the added deliverables from us. We offer question banks services and messaging services associated to different plans.
Visit our pricing page for a suitable plan.

Contact Us

Email: support[at]proxams.com

Phone:+44 (0)74 211 85798 | +234(0)805 874 1155

Proxams in Pictures

Examiners

Proxams supports the assignment of an examiner to make theory-based or practical-based questions. For practicals that has procedural steps, the steps has to be loaded in the "Manual Input" tab under "Questions Management". The maximum mark for the question should be specified so as to regulate the examiner. Examiners can be added under User Management.

Examiners are issued a unique ID and should be used to login. You can upload the examiners photo. An examiner can be assigned to multiple exercises.

Result Dissemination

Proxams supports the distribution of test scores to concerned users through electronic mails, short messaging services (SMS). This is found under Performance.
You can use conditionals to specify different messages that can be sent to users based on their performance. The default message is the one on the main textbox and will be sent to those outside the conditionals. You need message credits to use this feature.

The following placeholders in curly brackets can be used while composing your message.
{score}-score of the user, {name}-full name of the user, {examno} - exam number of the user, {test} - name of the exercise, {organization} - organization that conducted the test, {right} - rightly answered questions, {wrong} - wrongly answered questions, {unanswered} - questions not answered, {link} - unique link for the user to view his/her test report ( how the marking was done), {date}- date that the test was taken.

Question Banks

Proxams offers question bank services that enables subscribers to compile questions from a pool of over 100,000 MCQ questions and answers in different disciplines.
See our list of available questions on our Plans page.

Some plans come with 2 free questions database. However, all other question banks are available for sale from the User Profile area of the Admin Dashboard.