Test Pilot Enterprise — an e-learning software tool designed to simplify the delivery of online tests, tutorials and surveys — has been updated to 4.4. The product is now under the auspices of McGraw-Hill, after the acquisition of ClearLearning, the company that created it.
Test Pilot is designed for the automated creation of assessments for delivery and response collection using a Web server. Optionally, it can automatically score responses. Test Pilot consists of a question authoring database and a Web server extension to both administer the assessments and record, score, and retrieve user responses — all without requiring any knowledge of HTML or programming. Since it’s platform independent, it will run on any Mac.
Version 4.4 ads automated custom report and gradebook generation; this allows for the periodic (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) generation of gradebook or custom reports. There’s also now built-in uploading. If you turn on the upload initialization parameter by setting it to “on,” then Test Pilot authors can use the software to upload their media files rather than FTP or file sharing.
For new installations of Test Pilot, there are distributions of Test Pilot with an embedded Tomcat servlet runner. There’s also now a demo standalone version with an embedded database to assist new trial users in the evaluation process, as well as an option to download the servlet alone to simplify upgrading. More information, and the pricing structure, can be found at the product Web site.