Case Study - Examinations

The Supply UK Group are the UK’s no 1 independent tool hirer with a nationwide network of depots.

Protean Systems have hosted websites for Supply UK over several years, having designed and created the Group website, plus websites for the Survey & Laser, Water Services, Force 3 and Lumin8 divisions.

The Project Brief was to create and host online examinations for a Calm Networks Training package.

The package would consist of course material, an instructional video and a multi-choice examination to be taken by water access operatives. This to be rolled out to Water Utilities and Sub Contractors on an ongoing basis.

The Application Process

Each examination entrant has to first fill out an application form, payment can be made online or a special coupon code can be used.

After completing the form, an email is sent to the applicant and the information is stored in a central database. The confirmation email contains further instructions and a link to the course pages.

The Course Wizard

After completing the application form and entering the course, a wizard guides attendees though the various steps.

The calm networks course consists of an introduction and video, followed by the examination. The wizard steps the attendee through the three course stages in a simple intuitive fashion.

The Examination

A number of questions are presented to the attendee in a multiple choice format, one or multiple answers are indicated as required.

The attendee can navigate forward and back through the questions, at the end a summary of results is displayed and if the pass rate is achieved, a certificate is generated and emailed to the successful candidate.

Various exam options may be configured such as time limit, pass rate and question review.

Sitefinity Content Types

All the information relating to the examinations is stored in the Website back-end. This includes examinations, questions, answers and attendees.

Sitefinity CMS allowed us to describe all the information and fields to create new examination content types. These content types were automatically added to the existing Sitefinity types such as News and Blogs.

This saved on development time and auto created an interface for maintaining exams, questions and answers which can be used by any internal staff without requirement for technical knowledge.

Examination Management

In addition to the “public” facing web pages, Supply UK also have a back-end management page which displays a summary of all examinations, attendees and results.

This allows management to query in real-time and extract information for further processing.

Information can be exported for further analysis and forwarded to relevant parties such as the utility companies and their sub-contractors.

Project Conclusion & Benefits

Several hundred individuals have now successfully passed through the Calm Networks course. The utility companies are gradually adopting this process in order to ensure that individuals have a level of competency in accessing the water network.

As a result, costly incidences of water surges and associated problems should be minimised in the future.

As an added benefit, Supply UK now have a flexible framework for creating multiple examinations with a range of applications, both internal and external to the company.