Question Mark Perception

Last year our Educational Technology Unit arranged for the University to purchase Question Mark Perception and this year it's available for "early adopters" to test. Throwing caution to the wind I had my Blackboard tests converted for Perception (a time-consuming task, for some dumbass reason, as they both speak variants of XML.) The Perception system has been set up so that we must follow a long-winded procedure to create tests:

1. Create test offline.
2. Add obscure (Blackboard internal) module code to a comment field in the test.
3. Export test to "QPack" file (?!) with specific name space convention.
4. Log on to a module in Blackboard.
5. Take three clicks to find the Perception tools link and get authenticated for Perception server by Blackboard.
6. Import QPack file into Perception (3 more clicks & a pause.)
7. Return to Blackboard, 3 more clicks to add one from the list of Perception tests for the module ... if you forgot the obscure module code the test does not show (so go back 5 steps! + see below.)
8. Add the test, pretty-much as usual for Blackboard, sit back and relax...

This seems excessively complex, especially as Perception has a built-in publishing facility. Also apparently designed-in, is the inability of ordinary users to delete tests from the Perception server themselves. So if you forget the obscure module code you're stuck with a test you can't delete.

Now they always say caveat emptor to early adopters but it seems rather vital that when my students take their tests that their marks will get recorded in Blackboard for them to see. Perhaps it's a minor bug, but not only does this not happen (despite assurances to the contrary) the grade reporting software in Perception seems to be broken! And this has taken a full year to implement... <groan>

Update 15Oct04: The man in charge returned from a week-long conference today and has assured me that fixing the lack of grades is a top priority. Now we wait! your call is important to us, please stay on the line while we try to connect you...