TORONTO, June 12, 2017 /CNW/ – Ricoh Canada Inc. today announced the addition of Crowdmark’s advanced testing and grading solution to its Education solutions portfolio. The announcement was made today at the Canadian Association of University Business Officers (CAUBO) conference. This new addition is part of Ricoh’s ongoing efforts to better serve educators looking to enhance the student experience, improve the learning environment and increase faculty and staff efficiencies.
“Crowdmark’s innovative online testing and grading platform enables educators to take a major step forward in the digital transformation of an important educational workflow,” said Eric Fletcher, Vice President of Marketing for Ricoh Canada. “Not only does the Crowdmark platform increase the speed and accuracy of grading, but it also provides the underlying analytics and insights necessary for continuous improvement.”
Ricoh’s new testing and grading platform delivers clear benefits for both the student and the teacher. In the case of students, the solution provides rich feedback to accelerate student learning, and transforms assessment into a dialogue for improvement. It eliminates marking bias by removing student identification during the scoring phase, and provides faster access to test results. For teachers there are enormous benefits in access and speed: the system allows markers to access tests from anywhere and at anytime, eliminating the need for group marking sessions or the transporting of tests to and from the school. The result is an impressive reduction of marking time by as much as 50%, with the added flexibility of being able to create and grade long form-test answers on a digital platform.
“We’ve partnered with Ricoh to blend our unique strengths and provide better support for instructors and students to drive learning.” said James Colliander, CEO and founder of Crowdmark. “Ricoh’s position in the Education marketplace, their complimentary products and services, and their focus on customer experience are a good fit for us.”
Crowdmark’s online collaborative testing and grading platform was declared “Most Innovative” among 50 education technology startups considered by SIIA in San Francisco in 2014, and it is also a prize winner in EDUCAUSE’s Game Changers Business Competition. Today, Crowdmark serves over 200,000 users in North America.
While Ricoh has long been providing printing and scanning services for Crowdmark customers, the addition of Crowdmark to the Ricoh solutions portfolio provides Ricoh customers with a powerful and broad scope of end-to-end testing and grading services and solutions. “We are excited about what the Crowdmark solution can deliver to Canadian educators today and how we envision the product evolving with digital learning trends; the roadmap is a very exciting one for students, teachers, and the institutions they work in,” added Fletcher.
For details on Ricoh’s full line of products, services and solutions for the Education vertical, please visit www.ricoh.ca
About Ricoh:
Ricoh is a global technology company that has been transforming the way people work for more than 80 years. Under its corporate tagline – imagine.change. –Ricoh continues to empower companies and individuals with services and technologies that inspire innovation, enhance sustainability and boost business growth. These include document management systems, IT services, production print solutions, visual communications systems, digital cameras, and industrial systems.
Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group operates in approximately 200 countries and regions. In the financial year ended March 2017, Ricoh Group had worldwide sales of 2,028 billion yen (approx. 18.2 billion USD).
About Crowdmark:
Crowdmark is the world’s premiere online grading and analytics platform, allowing educators to evaluate student assessments more effectively and securely than ever before. Founded in 2012 by Professor James Colliander and Martin Muñoz, Crowdmark serves over 15% of the full-time undergraduate population in Canada and is in use at over 30 post-secondary institutions across the world. Crowdmark allows educators to reduce grading time by more than 50%, providing students with prompt and formative feedback. This significantly enriches the learning and teaching experience for students and educators by transforming assessment into a dialogue for improvement.
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