X-Pro Milestone: Comparative Evaluation against Similar Software Tools, Current Status, and Planned Future Directions

Computerized and partially computerized exams rely on item banks from which items are selected to produce tests; however, studies show that the availability of item banks is rather limited because the development of an item bank can involve investing a great amount of time and effort. X-Pro Milestone is a portable, personalized, featured, and syllabus-specific item-bank software tool that is capable of helping users maintain high-quality item-banks and producing printer-friendly multi-form exam instances along with proper answer keys for each exam-form. Motivated by the acceptance the earlier versions of this software tool, it is thoroughly re-engineered and re-implemented based on a comprehensive set of requirements that are responsive to user needs. In this paper, the latest release of this software is presented and the latest improvements are explained. We also cover the special Descriptive Markup Language (DML) used in constructing item banks. Further, the software is comparatively evaluated against a set of similar software tools available in the market based on a set of more than twenty features. We demonstrate that X-Pro Milestone is superior to other software tools based on a wide spectrum of features and functionalities that are not available in other software tools. We also cover the current status of this software tool and draw its future planned directions.