Within the Economics Department of the 'Hanzehogeschool' in Groningen (the Netherlands), the Questionmark products are being used in several domains.

Dr. Albert Kerkhof, staff member of the Department of Innovation and Research (DIR), and moving force behind the project: "Already in the eighties was I occupied with computer-based teaching. For my thesis in Hispanics, I used a self-programmed database to compare characters in novels".

Originally Albert Kerkhof wrote vocabulary training programmes. This was done with domain-specific software which made the exchange of experiences with colleagues from other domains very difficult. Moreover, developing the exercises was a lot of work and the lecturers often got the impression that they were re-inventing the wheel.

Kerkhof: "This changed dramatically with Questionmark. I came across the software suite, then still in DOS-version, by accident in 1994. Already then did Questionmark stand out because of its wide range of possibilities: you could for example show images with the questions, or even play sound. For DOS-software this was absolutely spectacular."

And what's more, Questionmark also turned out to be usable in almost all domains. With the help of his commissioner, Annemieke ter Borg-Spitholt, Kerkhof managed to bring together lecturers from different domains to develop exercises together. "Questionmark could be used not only for the language courses, but also for economics, marketing, or sociology", thus Kerkhof. "For the first time, we got the chance to profit from each other's experiences across domain bounderies."

"At the moment we especially use the Windows-version of Questionmark. Designer offers a very wide range of very beautiful question templates and runs perfectly on a Windows '95 network. In addition the programme has a powerful convertor, which makes it possible to simply take over old Questionmark questions or any other digital files. And the instruction texts and test questions are that much better protected. Simply activating the right parameters and passwords, and copying illegally, is as good as impossible", thus a convinced Kerkhof. According to Kerkhof, using Questionmark also stimulates the creativity of the lecturers. But the Questionmark products had a fertilizing effect in other ways as well.

For instance, the Hanzehogeschool developed a complete multimedia training and testing package in Question Designer by order of Domo, a Dutch manufacturer of dairy products. Domo has a long tradition of using temporary employees. Thanks to this, the production has become a lot more flexible. But the major problem is that these temporaries can only start after they have mastered the environmental and safety directions from the dairy sector.

Kerkhof: "Domo has invested a lot of energy in the training of its temporary employees and wanted to rationalise and speed up these trainings via computer tests. For this they chose the Hanzehogeschool as their partner: our experiences with Question Designer must have made quite an impression on the management. Developing the training package grew out to be a really difficult feat. The supporting softwareplatform was still Question Designer, but we wanted to get the most out of the package.

This mix caused the delivered training package to be of very high quality not only qua content, but also qua presentation and audio-visual support. The product has been designed in such a way that also temporary employment agencies use the CD-ROM to directly select the right candidates for the manufacturers of dairy products.

"We are envisaging more of similar projects for the future", thus an enthusiastic Kerkhof. "What I think is most fascinating is that we have been able to bridge the different departments of the college via our Questionmark projects. Programmers, designers, content suppliers, communication specialists: we all learn a lot from one another. That unique gathering of knowledge, together with the great power and flexibility of Questionmark, has opened up new roads for us…"

For more information, you can e-mail: a.j.kerkhof@pl.hanse.nl

Questionmark was founded in the UK in 1988 and was one of the first software companies to provide an authoring framework to create tests and assessments to run on PCs. Today the company offers a full range of software for the testing and assessment marketplace spanning Windows 3.X and 95, DOS, Macintosh and web environments. Businesses, governments, and universities in over 40 countries now use Questionmark software.