Surpass pre-release webinar for 12.34

Ashleigh Whittle from the Surpass team and host Paddy McLaughlin explained the new features and updates in the 12.34 release on 28 November.

Key features

Item Authoring

• Surpass Copilot, our new AI feature, is now an option you can request to help your item authors create distractors for Multiple Choice Question items.  
• Tag values can now be assigned to an item from the new Tag Hierarchy option created and defined by subject administrators, a more context-driven way for SMEs to select tag values.
• Item sets can now be previewed when viewing an item set within Item Authoring, so you can see how an item set’s content appears to candidates.

Tasks

• Authoring tasks can be configured to allow task assignees to create new items directly into a specified subject, for a more flexible item writing Tasks experience for SMEs.
• One tag group can now be set as a subject’s ‘featured tag group’, making the visibility of your favourite Tags (all tag values in the featured tag group that are assigned to items) more prominent in Item Authoring and Tasks.

Other features

• A new automatic item naming capability allows new items in Surpass to be created with a user-defined prefix and unique system-generated suffix.

Is Copilot likely to become a default on Surpass, that you have to opt out of?

No, users are always in the driver’s seat, so Copilot is an opt-in offering rather than a standard update. Our responsible approach to AI is steered by our Copilot Advisory Board.

With the roll-out of SecureClient for Mac, are the team investigating stylus or touch-input, given that delivery could now be via iPad?

We have not got any features or item types planned for this at the moment. However, candidates can use touch or stylus to select buttons or perform actions that would otherwise be done with mouse or trackpad.

Will ‘edit task’ allow you to amend the number of items per user?

Yes. Note that the maximum limit is 99.

Can you restrict the domain from which the distractors are generated?

Yes, a box is provided in Copilot, where instructions can be given to limit the AI’s search parameters. For example, restricting responses from a certain website.

Does Copilot only work on text, or will it work with numeric content?

Yes, Copilot does work with simple numeric content.