Customized Solution

I have always been confused what the idea: Make a Product and Deliver a Solution means. I have considered products; as moodle for example, a product. It is available for download, easy to install, customizable, and open source. What a product !! Every time I hear the word: Product, I connect it to an the moodle, and say "Well! I do not think I can provide a product like that, may be not now; I need time :) " But, when Prof. Dr.Alaa talked to Dr.Ahmed Hassan about passing the product the latter uses to asses Students in the Faculty, the latter mentioned something about purchasing the product after trial and stuff like that. I rethought about the concepts I am misunderstanding. I do not need to provide a product that contains all moodle customization features to be good. We started this simple Assessment Management System; internally, hoping it will lead us some where. I think about it as a Customized Solution. This Customized Solution can be further customized based on the situation you will use it for, and it is available. Right, it will need work from guys who made it in the first place, it will need their presence, their help with the installation, but come on; when you need it, you will get it. I am not saying it because I am selling this thing, it is just I wanted to send a message to everyone all over the world. I have been waiting a lot for illusions, many years I have not started achieving a real working system because I believed it has to be like moodle; till I figured out it does not have to be. Take my advice; and if you are a programmer, you shall start thinking about real system to implement, real life scenario/situation to automate. You will feel ultimate happiness.

I am thinking about Customization all the way through this experience. I might not provide it from the early beginning, but I believe there are customization that Assessment Management Systems shall provide; like:

• You can manage how many assessments you want for each course, provide dates, periods of times, times for each assessment, question types, and difficulty level.
• Assessment Management System shall be able to differentiate between different Assessment levels. Assessments shall not be too easy or too hard. Assessment Management System shall include a predefined number of different questions' classes.
• More than one question formats are available for online assessments. Assessment Management Systems provide Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) and True/False ones because they are so simple to mark, can be fully automated. I prefer thinking about Match Questions, Fill in the Blanks, as available for Assessment Management Systems. Essay questions are important, Assessment Management Systems can provide this option, tools and techniques to help instructor marks those questions, but to automate essay questions, I do not believe in that.
  
• MCQs need to be customized. Not all MCQs utilize four choices only, you can use five or more. You can set this up also.
• A Service Layer shall be provided over the database and the application, so Assessment Management System can be integrated with other systems.
• Mobile Assessment is one of the options that Assessment Management Systems shall provide. And that takes us; again to the difference between assessment and exam. Students can take assessments via mobiles, but not exams. I prefer adding the required two services over the application; so the solution is available for mobile plug-in upon request.
  

If you came out to more customization ideas, please do not hesitate to drop a comment, or mail me directly. I am really interested in this topic.