IMPORTANT NOTE:  Our system-wide Respondus® license will expire on June 30, 2009 and will not be renewed. Faculty who are currently using Respondus® to create assessments or assessment questions, or import assessments from publisher-created content, should speak with their local Director of Distance Learning about alternative methods that can be used to create/import assessment-related content into their Blackboard Vista course sections.

What is Respondus? Respondus® is a powerful tool for creating and managing exams that can be printed to paper or imported into Blackboard Vista and other eLearning systems. The Connecticut Community College system has purchased a system-wide license for Respondus, so it is available to all faculty. It can be installed on college PCs (by IT staff), or on faculty members' home PCs.

Why do faculty use Respondus? There are two primary reasons why a faculty member would use an assessment-creation program such as Respondus:

1. Because your textbook publisher makes test banks available in Respondus format, which can be uploaded into Vista.
    
2. Because you want to use it to type up your own test questions in a word processing file and then use Respondus to quickly import the questions into Vista, so you can create your own assessments.

Creating Your Own Test Questions and Assessments Using Respondus:  Exams can be created offline using any familiar Windows word processing program (such as Microsoft Word), saved as a text or "RTF" file, and then exported in a file format that can then be imported into Blackboard Vista. (Note:   Respondus works only on the Windows® platform.)

Respondus Test Bank Network: In addition to using Respondus to quickly create your own tests, one of the best ways for instructors to get "up and running" with the software -- and online teaching in general -- is to utilize the Respondus Test Bank Network. Here you will find test banks for hundreds of the leading textbooks in higher education. The test banks are in a ready-to-use format and can be downloaded with Respondus for free by instructors who adopt a participating textbook.  To see whether or not your textbook publisher has test banks available in Respondus format, visit the Respondus Test Bank Search webpage and search for your textbook. If it's NOT available in Respondus format, it MAY be available in one of the other common assessment-creation products, and you can search their test bank sites, as well:

• ExamView
• TestGen
• Diploma

Downloading Respondus on your Home PC
If you are already a faculty member teaching in the CT Community Colleges, you can easily access the information you files you need to download and install Respondus on your PC.

1. Log into Blackboard Vista.
2. In your Course List look for a section entitled Orientation--Online Teaching and Vista Technical Resources for Faculty.
3. From the Home Page, click on the icon labeled Respondus and Other Supplemental Applications.
4. Navigate to the area on Assessment Creation programs, and then to the Respondus area.
5. There you will find all the information you'll need. Please be sure to read the installation instructions available from this site before you try to install the program on your PC. In this course, you'll also find the customized documentation that's used in our Respondus hands-on training courses.

Other Respondus Resources

• Creating Tests with Respondus (use this internal training documentation for step-by-step instructions.)
   
• Respondus User Guide Download Page
  From this link, you can access the Respondus website and download the complete user guide (choose the Blackboard Vista version).
   
• Knowledgebase: A knowledgebase for Respondus and the Respondus Test Bank Network is available at  http://www.respondus.com/support/index.shtml.
   
• Flash Demonstration and Training Movies:  A series of Flash movies are available at http://www.respondus.com/products/screens.shtml. These are a great resource for familiarizing yourself with how to use Respondus.