SCAN STATION:

OMR System Passes Our Test

By Penny Lunt

“Take out your number two pencils.” That sentence strikes terror in the hearts of thousands of schoolchildren every day. But it’s music to the ears of those who process SAT exams, math tests, surveys and other bubble forms. No. 2 pencil can be quickly and accurately read by OMR scanners.

Who buys OMR scanners? About 75% of users are schools processing tests. The other 25% includes governments, medical organizations, police departments and businesses doing surveys and time sheets. These scanners use sensors to measure the darkness of marks on special bubble forms and send a number or letter describing each mark to your OMR software. They’re not new technology, but they’re the most efficient way to process large volumes of bubble mark forms.

We dove into the esoteric world of OMR scanning to test the SR-700-351 OMR reader from Scanning Systems and Remark Classic OMR software from Principia Products (www.principiaproducts.com).

Quick Scan Product: SR-700-351 OMR Scanner Supplier: Scanning Systems, Eden Prairie, MN, 612-941-2585 List price: $6,000 for businesses/$4,600 for schools, ink reader $1,000, second read head for dual scanning $2,000, second output tray $1,000. Rated speed: 58 sheets per minute Daily duty cycle: 1,000+ Duplex support: optional ($2,000) Paper capacity: 300 forms Warranty: one-year warranty with depot service, optional extended warranty Strengths: Fast and accurate, smooth paper handling. Optional dual output stacker separates accepted and rejected forms. Optional ink reader. Weaknesses: Noisy, limited to OMR. ProductInfo 205 Product: Remark Classic OMR 1.0 Supplier: Principia Products, Paoli, PA, 610-647-7850 Price: $449 Description: OMR processing software. Lets you set up form templates and reads the marks as answers. Strengths: Automatically grades tests and surveys, puts data into databases and analyzes the results. Produces bar and pie charts of the results. Weaknesses: None that we saw. ProductInfo 206

The major things you look for in an OMR scanner are speed, paper handling, ease of use and accuracy. Speed obviously lets you process big batches quickly. Efficient paper handling lets you avoid paper jams. Ease of use is important because “the scanner operators tend to be clerical workers and teachers, people who aren’t computer savvy,” says Victor Berutti, VP of Products at Principia.

The SR-700-351 processes 58 sheets per minute. Its paper handling was excellent (though noisy) in our tests once we adjusted the paper guide. The straight-through paper path means there’s little opportunity for paper to go astray. When you do get a jam, you pull a lever and the top cover of the scanner pops up. A knob lets you set form thickness.

Ease of use of the SR-700-351 comes from the fact that it has only three buttons - “Start,” “Clear” and “Aux.” The demo software that comes with the scanner is a limited function DOS program, so you’ll likely buy a Windows OMR program such as Remark.

Accuracy is a shared feature between the scanner and the software you use. The scanner has to sense the marks correctly and the software has to threshold and interpret them properly. Our tests of the SR-700 and Remark Classic OMR produced 100% accuracy. We threw in erasure and stray marks to see if we could trip the system up, but it had no problem reading the right marks.

You have to buy special, professionally printed bubble forms with timing marks on one side for this and other OMR readers. They’re very sensitive about forms. Some require special dropout colors. Scanning Systems works with red drop-out ink only.

For applications where you can’t force people filling out forms to use a No. 2 pencil, you can buy an ink reading head for this scanner. It reads all ballpoint and felt-tip inks except reds, yellows and oranges. Other options include a barcode reader, a printer and a second output tray for rejects.

Remark Office OMR is a Windows program that can do a lot with the data it receives from an OMR scanner (it works with all of them). The results come out in a spreadsheet. Each form you scan is displayed as a row of data. You can print the results and save them as a host of file types including Excel, FoxPro and Access. You can link to a database so you don’t have to save each batch of results separately.

The software automatically grades tests against an answer key and presents the results in a variety of ways. You can look at how each individual student did, look at groups of students, re-grade the tests based on percentiles of right answers and see the results in a bar or pie chart.

We would recommend this hardware/software pair to anyone processing bubble-mark forms. They’re well-priced and accurate.