In January, 2008, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities announced the availablity of a system-wide license for Respondus 3.5, a tool for authoring and editing tests and quizzes intended for delivery on paper or via an online course management system. WSU instructors can now install Respondus on their computers and begin using the tool to create questions and assemble tests.

Currently, instructors cannot publish Respondus tests to Desire2Learn (D2L), our course management system, directly. This feature is in the works and is major reason for our interest in the tool. Today, instuctors can take advantage of a slightly less convenient, but still very useful, approach to save Respondus questions and tests locally and then import them into D2L.The direct integration of Respondus and D2L will be a major enhancement.

Although D2L already includes test authoring tools, their functionality is limited and requires instructors to be online. With Respondus, instructors can import questions authored in Microsoft Word or from test banks produced by textbook publishers, they can add images, links, equations, and other elements, and they can do it all offline. Once Respondus tests are uploaded to D2L, instructors and students will benefit from strong online test delivery and grading features.