Today, the JudgeApps team is officially launching a new feature on the site – Exams! This means that JudgeApps is now the Judge Program’s official platform for testing.

The easiest way to explain is to send you to take one of the two practice quizzes that we have available. Have a look at https://apps.magicjudges.org/exams/ and take the Rules Practice or Policy Practice quiz – both are only 5 questions long – then come back!

OK, welcome back. Let me share the story of how we got here.

This January, some of the judges involved in the quarterly Level 3 Update Quiz approached the JudgeApps developers about hosting the quiz on Apps. We thought that was a good idea, so since then, we’ve been testing a beta “Exams” feature here on JudgeApps. We didn’t want to duplicate the work that had already gone into the legacy Judge Center, and we didn’t want to bite off any more than we were able to chew, so we always insisted that the platform would only be for quizzes, not for official certification exams. Thus, we focused our development effort on the smaller set of features that would be needed for informal, online quizzes.

However, our platform has matured to the point that we believe that it is the best solution for supporting the requirements of certification exams. After discussions with the Program Coordinators and other judge program leadership, we have decided to open up the beta to anyone with a JudgeApps account, and to start developing content for the practice and certification exams.

Status

JudgeApps is now the Judge Program’s official platform for testing. The technical development is virtually complete, and content development is underway. We plan to make more exams available in the near future: The Learning and Judge Levels Spheres are actively working on, and soliciting help with, questions for the various exam types.

We have mirrored two quizzes onto the Exams platform, and they are immediately available to anyone with a JudgeApps account. Courtesy of the Judge Practice Test Project, we have a 5-question rules quiz and a 5-question policy quiz. You may have already seen these available as Google Forms, but we’re now mirroring them to JudgeApps to demonstrate the Exams platform, and as an open beta test.

After you take the quiz, if you have feedback on the questions themselves, you’ll be able to click on the question number to lodge that feedback. Your comments are sent to the judges who write that specific test, and they will use that information to approve the test.

Over the coming weeks, more exam types will be available on JudgeApps, including practice exams and certification exams. The certification exams will be printable, similar to the old Judge Center. The technical implementation of printed exams is ready, but only certain exam types are considered “printable”, so you can’t print an exam just yet. Rest assured that you’ll be able to print an exam once the first certification exam goes live!

How to Help

Right now, you can visit our new Exams homepage and take the practice tests. We’ll be monitoring the site to identify any errors or performance bottlenecks that this beta test might reveal. We’re also open to feedback on any bugs or missing features that you might notice. If you encounter a problem, please check our known issues page, and if your issue isn’t listed there, report it to us!

Several judge projects are producing exam content for the practice and certification exams. If you’d like to help write or proofread questions, please fill out this Google Form. Your answers will be shared with the Sphere leads, who will be organizing the push to generate exam content.

Thanks and Gratitude

As with any project, many people were involved at varying stages of the process. We’d like to especially recognize Steven Zwanger, Jasper Overman, Antonio Zanutto, and the many people on their teams for creating content; Tom Kunc for his early work on how to implement Exams; Nate Hurley for his wealth of helpful feedback during beta testing; and the Program Coordinators.

Regards,

Dan Collins
JudgeApps Exams Project Lead

Paul Baranay
JudgeApps Lead Developer