Yes. We are currently (2020) working on an entirely new version of EOSCE that will support Android and iOS tablets as well as Windows for OSCE-Editor. It will be released in a first version towards the end of 2020. We are looking for people who would like to beta-test! > hello@eosce.ch
At the moment we do not have plans to release the source code to the project.
The EOSCE system software is being maintained by the Institute of Medical Education of the University of Bern, Switzerland.
The OSCE-Eval and OSCE-Track apps are available free of charge in the Apple app store. If you want to try out OSCE-Editor, just write us at request@eosce.ch. You can use the Editor for free as long as you evaluate EOSCE.
If you use Examic EOSCE regularly for your exams we have fixed prices for service packages (including the software, updates and support hours) which depend on the size of your institution/organisation. Please include information on the number of students and the number of exams per year at your institution.
The Institute of Medical Education is a non-profit organisation. We are using the earnings from the service package fully to pay our staff and to further develop EOSCE.
We are happy to announce that OSCE-Track and OSCE-Eval are now available in the Apple App Store. The OSCE-Editor Application is distributed outside of the App Store. Please contact us if you are interested in a trial.
We have investigated this during an early stage of our project. We found our iPhone prototype application did not offer sufficient screen estate to display the examination form efficiently. While technically possible, our usability tests have indicated that the amount of scrolling necessary to fill in questionnaires non sequentially was too much for most people. This lead us to consider devices with larger screen sizes.
Every bit of data is digitally encrypted and signed before it is sent over any kind of network connection. The encryption means your data cannot be read by anybody that doesn’t have your encryption key. Digital signatures mean that no one but the examiners at the actual exams can modify the exam results without anybody noticing. The server component also offers additional encryption and data versioning services to keep your data safe from data loss and manipulation. Nevertheless, storing the data on the server is meant to be temporary. We recommend you download all of your data and burn it to physical media as soon as you are done using it.
It turns out completely destroying iPads is reasonably hard to do just by dropping it. However, since we can never be too sure, EOSCE does periodic data backups over WiFi in regular 1 minute intervals. Backed up data can then be restored to a new device by the examination administrator. Examiners are advised to take notes on paper during this time. Data that could not be backed up can still be restored from iPads when connecting them to iTunes (this works even if the iPad’s display is broken).
Our software currently requires iOS 9 or later. This means that any device that runs iOS 9 is supported. We do recommend using iPads (3rd generation with Retina Displays) for the best user experience. The iPad mini is a great little device, but you will want check if the smaller display is good enough for your examiners.
We currently support English, German and French, but it is easy to implement new languages in the interface. If you would like to help us translate interface elements of the app into an other language, please feel free to contact us.