Susan Voigt is a program evaluation and data specialist at Capital Area Intermediate Unit (CAIU), Enola, PA. Pennsylvania’s Intermediate Unit system was created in 1971 by an Act of the General Assembly. As regional educational service agencies, they provide multiple services to school districts and other educational entities. Initially, the 29 intermediate units (IUs) focused on special education needs and services. Since their inception, the work of IUs has expanded to include educational professional development, technology services, curriculum support, and consortium programs. Susan’s team within CAIU provides surveys, grant evaluations, workshop evaluations, program and curriculum evaluations, and assessment data collection and analysis. CAIU has used Remark products since 2000, and Susan herself has been using Remark Office OMR since 2005.

For a recently completed grant evaluation, Sue conducted a large scale student science assessment that the CAIU PAGES conducts twice annually. This assessment can involve up to 1,700 plain paper answer sheets designed in MS Word. Different grade levels require a different number of questions, and to handle this, one answer sheet was created with three different Remark Office OMR scanning templates. When they receive the completed assessments, they select the correct template based on the grade level prior to scanning. With Remark Office OMR, CAIU was able to scan and analyze the 1,700 answer sheets within two to three days, even with interruptions, for the pre-test and post-test assessment forms. Susan says, “I can’t imagine how we would have been able to complete this without software that would scan the answers, grade them, and allow us to run basic statistical information on the results.

Other grant evaluations have included multiple versions of surveys that require advanced features such as linked regions and using different types of OMR and image regions within one template. Susan says, “I have loved using Remark Office OMR since coming to the IU in 2005. Everyone at Gravic, from sales to the help desk to accounts, exemplifies high quality customer service.

It is always a pleasure to see Sue at conferences including AERA and ASCD over the years. She has been a beta tester for Remark products and supplied valuable feedback and feature suggestions. We appreciate and value her support over the past 10 years as a Remark customer.