Remark Customer Hall of Fame - Class of 2010

Remark Customer Hall of Fame
We want to recognize the following customers for their long-time use of the Remark products and continual feedback that has helped shape our products into what they are today. Read on to learn more about these super users and what they do with the Remark software.

• Karlton Brown - Coordinator of Research of Lynn University
• Shawn Flower - Principal Researcher of Choice Research Associates
• Brenda Roof - District Information Officer of Webster Central Schools

Karlton Brown

• Coordinator of Research
  Lynn University
  Customer since 2005

Karlton Brown is the Coordinator of Research for the Office of Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment at Lynn University. His office is the clearinghouse for internally externally reported institutional data. His office operates under Office of the President, which ensures transparency so that data is without bias. Information is reported to internal departments and externally to the Department of Education and other government departments for research. Data is sometimes provided to other academic institutions for institutional research. It is critical that they report same figures and maintain the same formulae to obtain consistent results. They even perform data collection for doctoral students or recommend the Remark software to these students. Since 2005, Remark Office OMR and Remark Classic OMR have helped them accomplish their goals.

Before Remark, Karlton and his team were hand coding data using Excel and SPSS, which is costly and error prone. Not only does hand entry lack accuracy, but there is a great deal of reliance on dexterity and having your eyes in the right place. They found Remark and one of our fondest memories is Karlton’s attendance at a Remark Office OMR training class, where his humor brightened everyone’s day. Their major data collection project is course evaluations, which can number in the tens of thousands depending on enrollment. Remark allows them to collect and analyze the course evaluations so that they can quickly get the feedback into instructors’ hands. Outside of course evaluations, Karlton has found a myriad of uses for the software, all depending on the needs of institution at any given time. Students have used Remark for elections, which creates great awareness of Remark Office OMR and its capabilities. At this point, people dream up uses for the software. They particularly like 202 – Detailed Item Analysis and 205 – Analysis Group reports. They like that can create their own metrics based on specific groups. Pre-planning is more in depth now so they can get the most of the reports.

Karlton likes that the Remark software is "flexible and reliable" and that there is not a new learning curve from version to version. He feels it allows him to offer more to constituents by being more creative and therefore better able to address needs more efficiently. The end result is better utilization of resources. Recently Karlton has given talks at tradeshows about his projects that utilize the Remark software. He is our most enthusiastic proponent and we are quite thankful to him for spreading the word about Remark.

Shawn Flower

• Principal Researcher
  Choice Research Associates
  Customer since 2002

Shawn Flower is the Principal Researcher and sole proprietor at Choice Research Associates. Her primary mission is to conduct criminal justice research with a focus on program evaluation and female offenders including recidivism research, needs assessment, and re-entry into the community. She has been using Remark OMR since the Fall of 2002 when she began working as a graduate student at the University of Maryland, College Park. After she completed her education, she purchased a copy of Remark for use with her clients in her consulting company.

She uses Remark Office OMR for pen and pencil self-report surveys and to create forms to monitor day to day program activities (e.g., intake forms, adherence to curriculum, client progress reports). One of her most interesting and largest surveys was a 16 page survey for 200 men detained in jail. The men completed a survey that contained 182 questions on broad areas including criminal history, employment, education, relationships, leisure time, neighborhood safety, life skills, health including substance use history and interest in treatment. Shawn also used Remark Office OMR for a series of inter-related forms for an evaluation of Community Mediation Maryland (CMM) Re-Entry Program. CMM is a state-wide program that offers mediation services to those imprisoned in 10 correctional facilities around the state of Maryland. It is a rare opportunity for those returning to the community to have important and necessary conversations with those they care about and to plan for their return. When all information from all of the forms from different stages of the program is combined, the merged data captures both the administrative process and information required for an assessment of the program’s effectiveness. One of the challenges of evaluating this program is that CMM’s Executive Director assists independent local mediation centers in providing these services – but in the past, each center used their own forms and processes. Working collaboratively with CMM, Shawn was able to unify the process for this program by using the forms with Remark. This ensures the integrity of data captured both between the centers and from year to year, when staff turnover occurs given the program utilizes one-year contracted volunteers in this work. 

When asked about her favorite features of Remark Office OMR, Shawn says, "the flexibility of the software – it is incredibly powerful." As a researcher with such critical projects, she also appreciates the ability to translate the data directly into SPSS for analysis. Retaining the value and variable labels eliminates a lot of coding of syntax and/or getting the data ready for the analysis work. As Shawn says, "just set it up when you do the form – and presto! There you are – ready to crunch numbers." She says it "sounds geeky" but for us, it’s music to our ears. We thank Shawn for her continued support of the Remark software through her samples and suggestions.

Brenda Roof

• District Information Officer
  Webster Central Schools
  Customer since 2006

Brenda Roof is the District Information Officer at Webster Central School District, where she is responsible for all state, federal and local reporting of data for the district. Her department creates surveys, assessments and other measurement tools. She oversees the scanning and analysis of these surveys and assessments, and the imports and exports of all data in their instructional and student software systems. Brenda currently uses Remark Office OMR to collect perceptual data and summative data from their teachers regarding students who are transitioning from elementary school to middle school and middle school to high school. The teachers meet with the middle school counselors, and the middle school counselors also meet with the high school counselors and fill out a number of agreed upon questions centering on habits of mind, learning styles and program placement. The sheets are then scanned and the data is passed along to the middle school and high school administration and teachers to help make placement and group setting decisions. It is also combined with state assessment information and diagnostic information on their students.

When Brenda first started using Remark Office OMR, it was at Willink Middle School. Since then, they have expanded use to all 11 buildings in the district. Brenda’s largest project came in the first year they used Remark. They created answer sheets for their students who were taking the New York Regents Exams in all subject areas and were able to collect, analyze and inform their instruction in a timely manner for the first time ever. The state at that time typically took months if not years before they were able to see the student results. They are also using Remark Office OMR this year to collect data from their staff, students, parents and community, which Brenda thinks will be their biggest endeavor thus far. Brenda says, "we process so many different things with Remark it is hard to say anything is bigger, better or more important because everything we do is just that, especially to the end users and the students. Because it is helping to immediately inform instruction."

What is important to Brenda is, "the data analysis, it is just so powerful." She goes on to say, "Once you have it set up, you can use it over and over again and we do, so that is also a nice feature. We have hundreds of surveys and assessments that we just use year after year!" Brenda has provided a great deal of input into the reporting features of Remark Quick Stats over the years to help us create the best software possible, including directly influencing the new "scaled scoring" feature in Remark Office OMR 8. We thank Brenda for her input and willingness to test drive new features to ensure they meet our customers’ needs.