EChemTest®

May 30, 2020 | News

EChemTest® is the electronic Self Evaluation Session (SES) test service run by the ECTN Association (www.ectn.eu) through its Virtual Education Community (VEC) committee to evaluate Chemistry competences for:
• Professional workers seeking career developments and industrial mobility: of progression at work, of self-evaluation for motivation and starting a formal course or taking a national examination;
• Students seeking for European Academic Exchange: of evaluation of the chemistry knowledge as well as the understanding of chemistry in a foreign language to undertake a period of study in another country, or to evaluate competence at a European level;
• Citizens interested in self-evaluating his/her knowledge in chemistry: to pursue life-long learning.

Information on the origin, motivations and evolution of EChemTest® are given in the section BACKGROUND where details on the different European Life Long Learning Projects which provided financial support to the ECTN efforts to achieve its educational objectives since 1996 are listed.
EChemTest® SESs are up to one hour long test sessions consisting of a set of 30 randomly selected Questions and Answers (Q&A)s run on the cloud by the local examiner. The Open Source software EOL (https.//echemtest.libreeol.org) is used (see the relevant user guide in https://echemtest.libreeol.org/doc/ECHEMTestGuide.pdf) for this purpose. The large bank of Q&As covers the de facto standard contents of the ECTN Eurolabels grouped into Libraries of four different levels:
• Pre-University (Level-1): a person at the end of compulsory education (General Chemistry 1 (GC1));
• University Access (Level-2): a person at the beginning of Chemistry related University studies (General Chemistry 2 (GC2));
• University Bachelor (Level-3): a person at the end of the Core Chemistry Syllabus at the University Level as defined in the «Chemistry Eurobachelor®» (e.g. Analytical Chemistry 3 (AC3); Biological Chemistry 3 (BC3); Chemical Engineering 3 (CE3); Inorganic Chemistry 3 (IC3); Organic Chemistry 3 (OC3); Physical Chemistry 3 (PC3));
• University Master (Level-4): a person at the end of a Master degree in one of the specialized chemistry areas in agreement with the «Chemistry Euromaster®» requirement (Computational Chemistry 4 (CC4); Conservation Science 4 (CS4); Advanced Organic Chemistry 4 (AOC4)).

EChemTest® Libraries are maintained and administered by the VEC with the support of an ad hoc Panel of experts for each Library. Information on the VEC activities, and the offer of services (to both ECTN members and third parties) and on the Library Panels are given in the COMMITTEE IN OFFICE section.

EChemTest® activities are run according to the Prosumer collaborative model (a prosumer may act both as a producer and as a consumer of the agreed service after signing an ad hoc Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). Accordingly:
• ECTN acts as a PRODUCER when managing directly/indirectly EChemTest® activities (e.g. by coordinating the TCs (Test Centres), Libraries, e-test software, etc.) and as a CONSUMER when using facilities and competences of the TCs for its own purposes;
• ECTN member signatory of the ad hoc MOU acts as PRODUCER when supporting upon request EChemTest® activities through its own TC and competences and as a CONSUMER when running EChemTest® activities for their own use;
• ECTN AGENCY signatory of the ad hoc MOU acts as PRODUCER when spinning the market for services to third parties and paid activities on behalf of ECTN and handles payments and credits/debits offsetting mechanisms.

EChemTest® is a cloud-based service which can be accessed using a Web browser compliant with HTML5 (Chrome, Firefox, Opera). The service is available in several languages (English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Slovenian). People not familiar with e-tests, should train themselves with the ad hoc demonstration tests (please forward the request to http://www.chem-learn.com/demo-libraries-request/) before taking any of the official SESs.
EChemTest® SESs are run either in a National TC or in an Accredited Test Site (ATS) belonging to (or associated with) a Higher Education Institution (HEI) member of ECTN and signatory of the ad hoc MoU. In the MOU the HEI commits itself to run EChemTest® SESs under controlled conditions, to get its own personnel trained for that function, to provide the resources needed to fulfil related responsibilities and to ensure the participation of its personel to the VEC activities as illustrated in the TEST CENTRES section.

The academic use of EChemTest® covers a wide area of T&L academic applications (like evaluating students’ dispersion, awarding curricular credits, supporting students’ mobility, training on laboratory practice, etc.). The non-academic use of EChemTest® covers individual and market oriented applications (like building lifelong learning curricula, delivering professional training, issuing Individual Proficiency Certificates (IPC) of the «ECTN – European Chemistry Certificate» useful for international mobility and career advancement, etc). Among non-academic activities run by the Agencies are the organization of commercial events and the support to companies and professional association activities.

EChemTest® information and request at: contact@echemtest.net