PRESS RELEASE Of interest to editors and journalists covering: Books and Publishing, Computers/Software, Education, e-Learning, Internet Pearson Education and Respondus Provide Educators With A Powerful Tool For Creating and Managing Online Assessments REDMOND, WA - July 8, 2004 /Send2Press Newswire/ -- Pearson Education (NYSE: PSO), the global leader in educational publishing, is partnering with Respondus, a developer of exam authoring tools, to help instructors develop online assessments from Pearson Education test banks. Respondus-formatted "test banks," or pools of questions from which exams are constructed, will be available in fall 2004 for all Pearson Education Higher Education imprints, including Prentice Hall, Addison-Wesley, Longman, Allyn & Bacon and Benjamin Cummings. Adopters of select Pearson Education textbooks have access to Respondus- formatted test banks from www.respondus.com. Respondus 2.0 works to produce assessments that can be printed to paper or published directly to Blackboard, eCollege, WebCT, and other course management systems. Exams are created offline in a familiar Microsoft Windows(R) environment, and existing exams can be converted from eight different formats including word processor files. "Faculty at over 2,000 institutions will benefit from this partnership," said David Smetters, president of Respondus. "We receive requests almost daily from instructors who want Pearson Education test banks in Respondus format." "Respondus 2.0 provides a real solution for instructors who want to author tests in a more robust way and get the most out of their course management system," said Ray Henderson, General Manager, Central Media Group, Pearson Education. "It helps simplify a complicated process, and provides educators with greater flexibility and time savings." About Respondus(R) Respondus, Inc. develops assessment, survey, and game authoring tools for use with Blackboard, eCollege, WebCT, and other e-learning systems. Instructors at over 2,000 colleges and universities in over 50 countries use Respondus software to enhance the capabilities of their course management systems. Its features have made it popular at higher education institutions, regardless of the course management platform being used. More information: http://www.respondus.com. About Pearson Education Educating 100 million people worldwide, Pearson Education is the global leader in educational publishing. With such renowned brands as Pearson Prentice Hall, Pearson Longman, Pearson Addison Wesley, Pearson Allyn & Bacon, Pearson Benjamin Cummings and many others, Pearson Education provides quality content, assessment tools and educational services in all available media, spanning the learning curve from birth through college and beyond. Pearson Education is part of Pearson, the international media company. Pearson's other businesses include the Financial Times Group and the Penguin Group. Media Contacts: Rod Granger of Pearson Education +1-212-782-3486 rod.granger@pearsoned.com Andrew S. Kent of Respondus, Inc. +1-425-497-0389 akent@respondus.com # # # [ source of news = Respondus, Inc. ] ref: http://www.send2press.com/2archive/2004/pr04-070804-respondus.txt http://www.send2press.com/2archivePDF/pr04-070804-respondus.pdf ----------------------------------------------------------------- *IMPORTANT NOTE TO MEDIA: to reach the organization releasing this news, please contact: akent@respondus.com (media only) If used for publication, please send specimen copy. ----------------------------------------------------------------- S2PR-NP/ 4C / WA / Redmond, Washington / USA / English / NYSE: PSO Copr. (c) 2004 Send2Press Newswire. This release was issued on behalf of the above organization, who is solely responsible for accuracy of content, by Send2Press(TM), a unit of Neotrope(R). http://www.Send2Press.com keywords: -------- Blackboard, eCollege, WebCT, course management systems, elearning, e-learning, testing, test banks, Respondus Test Bank Network, PSO