Press Releases

Scantron^® Announces Next Step in Survey Software with eListen 6.0

IRVINE, CALIF (November 21, 2007) - Scantron, a leading provider of assessment and survey solutions designed to help education and commercial organizations measure and improve effectiveness, today announced the release of eListen 6.0 survey software. eListen 6.0 eliminates tedious manual data entry by capturing and storing handwritten responses using Scantron's Clarity OMR and Imaging scanner. New reporting features allow those comments to be included in reports exactly as the person wrote them.

"This is one of Scantron's most anticipated software upgrades in recent years," said Sal Rahman, vice president of sales and strategic partnerships for Scantron's Data Collection business unit. "It is vital to our customers that the process of survey creation, administration and reporting be as painless as possible. If it's important to them, then it's certainly important to us. That's why the eListen 6.0 upgrade is so significant. Capturing handwritten responses is crucial to collecting accurate survey data. Add in the other features included in the upgrade and eListen 6.0 becomes an even more valuable, easy-to-use survey software tool."

Capture Handwritten Responses

With the release of eListen 6.0, Scantron offers the ability to capture images of handwritten responses from paper surveys. The ability to capture images along with traditional OMR data, all in one pass, is provided by the Clarity hybrid scanner. Once the handwritten images are captured, the survey administrator has the option of showing or hiding the images when running reports in the eListen Analyzer.

Using the Database Editor, the survey administrator can include additional comments regarding the captured images. The Analyzer reports will then display both the original handwritten images and the additional comments.

Additional Features

In addition to capturing handwritten responses, eListen 6.0 offers new product enhancements to better serve survey administrators in survey creation and reporting. The web-based ranking question now supports button entry, meaning respondents no longer have to manually enter their answers into empty text boxes. By automating the ranking feature, mistakes such as omissions and duplicate entries are eliminated. Also newly available is a question type, supported by both Web and Network surveys, which allows the survey creator to specify a limit to the number of answers a respondent may choose (i.e. select up to 3 from the following 10 choices). Lastly, there are now advanced filtering options for Favorable and Unfavorable reports, meaning there are more ways to filter responses according to respondent criteria.

Clarity OMR and Imaging Scanner

The Clarity OMR and Imaging scanner is the latest scanning technology from Scantron and acts as a traditional OMR scanner, a TWAIN imaging scanner or a ‘hybrid' scanner that can deliver OMR data and an image in a single pass.  This capability allows eListen 6.0 to offer all of the benefits previously available using an OMR scanner, plus the added benefits of image scanning.  The Clarity scanner is available for use with all Scantron software products. Also available is an ‘Application Development Toolkit' for developing custom applications to utilize the Clarity.

About Scantron Corporation

Scantron Corporation www.scantron.com, headquartered in Irvine, Calif., helps education and commercial organizations measure and improve effectiveness with assessment and survey solutions. Scantron provides tools for the rapid, accurate and reliable capture of data with innovative software and survey solutions that leverage the company's expertise in world-class forms printing and scanner manufacturing. Scantron is a subsidiary of Harland Clarke Holdings Corp., which is wholly owned by M&F Worldwide Corp. (NYSE: MFW).