Astec(tm) 1.20 - Topical Exam Creation System (CD-ROM)

"ASTEC" is an item banker and conventional test development system that helps organize item banks and print camera-ready tests from them. Its menu-driven design makes it easy to use.
The program keeps item banks safe by encrypting them; any attempt to view a bank without "ASTEC" produces a series of meaningless characters. It is protected by a user-definable password which must be activated in order to run the program.
Items can be entered with the built-in text editor, or "ASTEC" can import items into its item banking structure from text only (ASCII), Microsoft Word, or WordPerfect files. An item may be a self-contained test question, or a passage associated with several questions such as might be used in a reading comprehension test. Information can also be stored with each item, such as an item's source, last time used, or item statistics.
Test items are organized into a user-designed hierarchical bank. Simple, non-hierarchical item banks may contain up to 999 items, while structured banks may hold more than 100,000 items. "ASTEC" shows the bank structure graphically.
To create a test, items can be selected by browsing through the bank, or "ASTEC" can randomly choose the items. It automatically groups items associated with a passage, such as reading comprehension, and prints them together beneath the passage. When testing is complete, "ASTEC" can run the "ITEMAN" item analysis program (sold separately) and analyze the test response data. After the analysis is finished, the results can be imported directly into each item's information record for later use.
NOTE: "ITEMAN" is required for item analysis. See page ? for a complete description.
"ASTEC" requires DOS 3.3 or higher, with 640KB RAM.