UK eUniversities Worldwide (UKeU) is the government-backed online learning site for all UK universities and colleges. The site will go live in 2003, and aims to have one million students by its tenth year of operation. UKeU is looking for the best-of-breed programs in several areas, with plans to join them together in a modular format.
In its largest licensing deal to date, WebMCQ won the contract with for the testing and assessment component of the site with its new Interactive Question Server (IQS) assessment system, which can provide practice questions to students as well handle the final assessment.
"Students really love doing the practice questions and getting instant feedback on what their strengths and weaknesses are," James Dalziel, executive director of WebMCQ told ZDNet Australia . He said the deal would open a lot of doors for the company both in Australia and overseas.
"This is a new product for us, and to have UKeU pick us on a global basis and say this is the best system to run with is a big step up for us," said Dalziel. WebMCQ is looking to expand internationally after a successful start on the Australian market, with customers such as AMP, the Australian Stock Exchange, Optus, and 27 universities.
Dalziel said the success of WebMCQ is due to its ability to innovate. The company was built on retained earnings instead of capital raised during the dot-com boom, which means they don't have investors "holding a gun to our heads" demanding a return on their investment.
"This new program they've taken is a good example of that," said Dalziel. "We've had a program out for about five years that did this, in an old way, and we've been working on [IQS] for about 18 months now. There's no way we could have done that if we needed more funding to innovate."
