Getting started with Plom

Student test data should be treated very carefully. Tests are high-stress and high-stakes for both students and instructors. No student wants to be told

“Your test paper was lost” or “We cannot find your grade”

and consequently we will start with a warning.

Plom is still a work in progress.

While we do not want to dissuade you from using Plom, we do want to make sure you understand that this is software still in progress. We haven’t installed all the seat-belts yet! Because Plom is still in early stages we have not made our repository completely public yet. In the meantime, this software is “invite-only”. Please do get in touch if you’re interested in playing with it and we’ll arrange access and help you get started.

All of that said, we have used Plom in 20 courses to mark many thousands of papers.

Before using Plom on a real live test

We strongly recommend that you

  1. Familiarise yourself with Plom’s components and the whole of Plom’s workflow from initial test specification, right through to generating a test-return webpage.
  2. Install the Plom package through pip or download the repository.
  3. Run the demo-server and try out the client.
  4. Run through the entire workflow on a simple 1 question test – including setting up the server and marking papers running the client.
  5. Give your class a small practice test or quiz using Plom.

and by then you’ll be ready to give a real test.

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