Galadrim is working with theInstitut du Monde Arabe to develop a web-based exam management platform for Arabic language certification.

The Institut du Monde Arabe creates the first International Certificate of Proficiency in the Arabic Language, the CIMA.

The Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) was founded in 1987 with the aim of promoting Arab culture and highlighting its contribution to world culture. One of its missions is to promote the learning of the Arabic language through specific courses, the creation of teaching aids and assessment examinations.

With this in mind, in 2018 the Centre de Langue et de Civilisation Arabes (CLCA) launched the first international certificate of proficiency in the Arabic language. To obtain this certificate, candidates are required to take various tests (oral and written comprehension, oral and written production) at CLCA-approved examination centers. For the first three years, these sessions were managed and organized using office tools such as Word or Excel, which was a major obstacle to the development of the certification and made interaction between stakeholders difficult.

It was therefore necessary to develop a software platform to facilitate the organization of sessions.

Galadrim was chosen in 2022 to develop this platform.

A platform bringing together all the players involved in the sessions

In practical terms, the platform facilitates interaction between all the players involved in the smooth running of the sessions: the Institut du Monde Arabe, approved examination centers, examiners, printers and so on.

We have divided the development into three modules, corresponding to the three main stages in the organization of the sessions:

  • Exam center management: messaging system to answer questions from centers wishing to become approved centers, center registration (automatic document generation, electronic signature).

  • Exam session management :

    • IMA: set up exam sessions, organize training for examiners according to their skills, deposit session documents in a dedicated printer's area

    • Examination center: register for a session offered by the IMA, register candidates for the session, assign examiners to sessions

    • Printer: consult all documents relating to the session, print them and send them to each center.

  • Assessment management: submission of candidates' papers by the centers, registration of markers and automatic assignment of papers to markers based on a wide range of criteria, management of third corrections in the event of discrepancies between markers' scores, entry of written and oral production scores by markers, automatic generation of a diploma in PDF format.

Today, more than 80 centers have completed the registration process on the platform, and the first exam session in November 2022 attracted more than 600 candidates !

Challenges met

One of the challenges of our collaboration was to release successive, prioritized versions of the application to meet the incompressible deadlines associated with the first session in November. For each module, we prioritized functionalities so as to make it possible to hold the session.

In addition, the technical ecosystem of the application developed required connection to a number of existing tools:

  • We used Pandadoc to sign contracts electronically

  • We connected to the Passnum software used by the IMA to mark students' papers.

Numerous documents are also published in PDF format based on information supplied by IMA members or centers, such as :

  • Attendance sheets for tests

  • Candidate tags

  • Examination certificate

  • Diplomas

  • Examiner training certificate

We used the jsPDF library to easily generate these documents from specific templates.

Galadrim proposed an excellent solution to our needs. The team was very professional, clear - and very nice! - were extremely attentive to our needs, gave us excellent advice and were extremely adaptable. Don't hesitate to call on them - you won't be disappointed!
Zahra Nesrine Zenina
Zahra Nesrine Zenina
CIMA Certification Coordinator

Technologies used