The Australian and New Zealand College of Veterinary Scientists (ANZCVS)
The Australian and New Zealand College of Veterinary Scientists (ANZCVS) is a membership based, non-profit organisation committed to the pursuit of excellence in Veterinary Science through Membership and Fellowship examinations.
For 50 years, ANZCVS has brought together members of the veterinary profession to create communities of practice, promote advanced scientific research and drive excellence through the highly regarded Membership and Fellowship qualifications for over 3500 veterinary professionals across Australia, New Zealand (and beyond).
The primary service of the Australian and New Zealand College of Veterinary Scientists (ANZCVS) is to provide advanced veterinary certifications through examinations. While digitising their examinations had been a strategic goal for the college for many years, the COVID-19 pandemic made the move to a digital platform a necessity.
“Prior to the pandemic, our examinations were paper-based or in-person oral examinations that required all candidates, examiners, invigilators, and observers to travel to a central location in Queensland for their examinations,” Stephen Alderman, Chief Executive Officer, ANZCVS, explained. “This was about 300 or 400 people per exam cycle.”
In 2020 and 2021, the college learned that a decentralised model using paper-based examinations and in-person oral exams created huge logistical problems and delays. After rethinking their entire delivery process, ANZCVS knew that digital was their only path forward.
But the college knew that traditional platforms, which are often costly and resource-intensive with long onboarding cycles, were not their solution. Instead, they sought to find a trusted organisation with a platform that embraced a modern view on examinations.
ANZCVS considered multiple partners, but found the scoping and requirements process of those solutions to be very time consuming and costly to meet all their requirements.
“As a not-for-profit organisation, it was vital for us to balance our requirements, costs, resources, and future needs when looking for a solution,” Stephen explained. “Other solutions cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement and tens of thousands to maintain each year, as well as significant customisation to meet our needs.”
MaivenPoint Examena, however, was exactly what the college was looking for. It was cost-effective, able to be implemented and onboarded between their exam cycles, and met their core written delivery requirements, with features like internet disconnection protection and continuation, data encryption, and single sign-on. On top of all that, Examena gave ANZCVS the monitoring they needed to have a view of end-to-end delivery, without the necessity of third-party solutions.
Examena was designed to be a single platform for authors, invigilators, markers, graders, and candidates to better organise exams. The solution is fully integrated into Microsoft 365, transforming exam experience for both candidates and invigilators with features like intuitive exam scheduling and planning, diversified question and paper crafting, and anonymous and non-anonymous marking methods.
I would advise others to look into platforms built with a flexible modern view of the examination space like Examena. It is a perfect balance of requirements, costs, resources, and future needs.
Prior to Examena, examinations were a manual and timeconsuming process for ANZCVS. Each paper required many hours of formatting, individual labelling and packaging, and transportation and distribution. Then, each exam paper needed to be scanned and filed before it could be marked. Stephen estimates it was hundreds of person-hours, just on logistics. “Weeks would pass before an examination could be marked,” he explains. With Examena, however, papers can be crafted, taken, and marked in a very short time frame.
To prepare their candidates and examiners for the new tool, they first ran a pilot with the help of the MaivenPoint team. Based on those learnings, they provided online guides and hosted multiple live demonstrations to ensure all users were confident about how to use the platform.
“The platform required very little training for stakeholders,” Stephen says. “The interface was clean and made sense. Our training was easily completed remotely. Overall, candidates and examiners are happy with the new platform.”
Now, ANZCVS is looking to adopt Examena as their single platform for all examination processes. “We were fortunate to be part of some envisioning processes where MaivenPoint is looking to understand the valid needs of a business and determine how that will map to future features and roadmaps,” Stephen says. ANZCVS is working with the Examena team on incorporating additional marking models for more assessment applications.
With Examena, ANZCVS’s entire examination process, from administration activities associated with the preparation of exams to creation and delivery, has been streamlined. Stephen estimates the college was able to reduce exam logistics by a hundredfold, saving hundreds of hours of work each exam cycle.
Stephen and the college are happy with the results. “Examena delivers a consistent experience across all candidates and examiners with a robust and stable delivery,” he says. “We were able to quickly and easily implement and onboard the solution without interrupting our exam cycles. To sum it up, we went from purchase to production in 6-8 months, and our success metric was that 100% of candidates completed their written examinations through Examena.”
To others looking to digitise their exams, Stephen says, “I would advise others to look into platforms built with a flexible modern view of the examination space like Examena. It is a perfect balance of requirements, costs, resources, and future needs.”
