ATP “Innovations in Testing” 2023 Conference in Dallas, USA, March 12-15, 2023

cApStAn was a proud sponsor of the Annual ATP “Innovations in Testing” conference which took place March 12 to 15 in Dallas, USA. cApStAn was represented by the business development team, Devasmita Ghosh and Nela Manojlovic,  as well as Musab Hayatli and Laura Wäyrynen from cApStAn’s US office.

The conference provided a great opportunity, as always, for networking with experts from the assessment world, attending sessions, round tables and panels to hear of the most recent developments and trends in the testing industry. And to present our translation quality control and diversity, equity, inclusion, and bias reduction (DEI-BR) methods. These are solutions cApStAn offers to organizations in the testing, professional certifications, talent management assessments and market research space worldwide. Testing in diverse contexts requires adapting items into multiple languages with a focus on cross-cultural equivalence.

The highlight of the conference for us at cApStAn was the panel discussion on March 14 with our own Musab Hayatli, along with John Weiner, from Lifelong Learner Holdings, Andre Allen, from FifthTheory, and Hazel Wheldon, from Multi-Health Systems Inc and other experts from the assessment community. The title of the session was “Global Considerations for Equity in Technology-Based Assessment” (TBAs). While these technology-driven advances offer a range of benefits, stakeholders also raised potential concerns regarding fairness, equity and potential bias. The panel took a global perspective to consider how these concepts are viewed and addressed in various regions of the world. These included translation and adaptation of TBAs across multiple languages and cultures, access to technology, and preparing test takers for the assessment experience across a wide range of environments that vary with respect to technological resources.

Our team attended a few other presentations at ATP on the theme of equity and DEI-BR. In a session titled “The Importance of ‘Diversity of Thought’ in Preventing Bias in Professional Testing”, Clarence Chaffee, President at the Caviart Group, USA, said that in order to truly prevent bias one needs to go beyond demographic diversity and ensure that credentialing programs have true diversity of thought. A committee comprised of individuals who all attended the same level of schools or work in the same type or size of companies will tend to have the same experiences and therefore the same thoughts and beliefs. Such groups may have demographic diversity but still lack diversity of thought. Our own Nela Manojlovic was this session’s coordinator.

The workshop on “Integrating Cultural Humility and Mindfulness in Test Item Writing” also addressed the need to appropriately address issues of race, ethnicity, culture, and identity in test items to ensure exam fairness. Participants were guided through peer review training aimed at uncovering unconscious bias, split into groups and each group was asked to practice peer reviewing to identify/correct bias.

‘Large Language models and Assessment Development – ChatGPT and Beyond’ provided a valuable insight into the future of assessments, among many other things, in light of new AI development and addressing issues ranging from concerns the impact on jobs, to possibly employment of such systems in various aspects of assessment preparations and administration, to legal ramification, copyright for example, of using such systems.  

A completely new and fun activity for us at the ATP was to partner with Lineup, Caveon Test Security, Data Recognition Corporation, Heuristic Solutions, and Internet Testing Systems (ITS) for a raffle. The winners were announced on the last day: Tara Myers from the American Nurses Credentialing Center and Susan Farago from Salesforce.

Cover photo, clockwise from upper left:

Nela Manojlovic from cApStAn coordinating the session on “The Importance of ‘Diversity of Thought’ in Preventing Bias in Professional Testing”, members of the panel discussion with Musab Hayatli on “Global Considerations for Equity in Technology-Based Assessment”; the four finalists at the “Fast-Pitch” session; the winners of the cApStAn & Co raffle; Clarence Chafee from Caviart; Nela, Laura and Devasmita at the cApStAn booth; Nela setting up the cApStAn booth; Musab Hayatli with Alex Casillas, from ACT; opening speech by Stan Phelps; winners of the cApStAn & Co raffle. Middle photos: slide from the “Integrating Cultural Humility and Mindfulness in Test Item Writing” workshop and the raffle check.