Category Archives: Education

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village In mid-November 2018, Wisconsin University announced plans to stop offering six liberal-arts majors, including geography, geology, French, German, two- and three-dimensional art, and history, claiming the institution no longer has the resources to sustain them. “But, as much as this is a tale of a …

“Will the liberal arts   survive the tech-hungry 21st century economy?”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village/Roberta Lizzi – Senior project manager, external human resources director @cApStAn cApStAn has almost two decades of experience in the linguistic quality control of test items in international large scale assessements, such as PISA, PIAAC, PIRLS, TIMSS, etc. The translation verification process compares source and target …

“Challenges in parallel translation verification of test items with script/audio, e.g. for pre-school children”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village How can schools prepare students “for jobs that have not yet been created, to use technologies that have not yet been invented and to solve social problems that we don’t yet know will arise”? A thought-provoking introduction by Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills …

““Versatility” is the key 21st century skill”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Interesting review of the recently published book “The Testing charade” by Daniel Koretz PhD, Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Regular testing benefits the learning process, he says, in this sense it is “a means to give formative assessment”. But it …

“When stakes in testing get too high a lot can go wrong”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village The time has come for academic institutions to reflect on their one-size-fits-all model and to understand who the next generation of learners is and how they want to learn. Student segmentation is the key to being able to cater to new and very diverse educational …

“The future learners”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village In the age of “EdTech” are some students being left behind because of lack of access to digital devices? ACT has recently released the results of a 2017 survey of students who took the ACT test, which shows how family income, racial/ethnic background, geography and …

“How the “digital divide” can affect students’ learning”

by Steve Dept – cApStAn partner The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA (see the short PISA video here) is a system-level assessment of knowledge and skills in 15-year old students across the world. In other words, PISA implements (and analyses) internationally standardised assessments of student learning outcomes towards the end of compulsory …

“The PISA 2021 Core D contract awarded to cApStAn”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village A recent study by Bloomberg, based on UN population data, has brought on a resurgence of discussions about the impact of “Generation Z-ers”–also known as Gen Z-ers, iGeneration, Post-Millennials, Homeland Generation, or Plurals–on society. Bloomberg takes 2000-2001 as the “intergenerational cut-off point” and predicts that …

“Generation Z-ers are coming of age and bringing fresh challenges to educators”

by Steve Dept – cApStAn partner The International Test Commission (ITC) is a closely-knit community of researchers and field practitioners who share their work with one another, set up joint research projects and, perhaps most importantly, pool resources to define, streamline and promote best practices in testing. The ITC Guidelines for Translating and Adapting Tests …

“11th Conference of the International Test Commission”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Recent research from New York and Oregon State Universities shows that multilingual students make academic gains in reading and mathematics at double or triple the rates of their English-only-speaking peers. The research is co-authored by Karen Thomson, Assistant Professor, College of Education, Oregon State University, …

“New research shows academic benefits of multilingualism in children”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Academia with a vision? Are we breaking the traditional codes that open doors to the realm of the intellectual elite? This blockchain university project is “geographically agnostic,” prioritizing a “borderless” academic community over local or national ties. Lower tuition fees for students? Less red tape? …

“World’s first blockchain university set to become “the Airbnb of degree courses””

by Steve Dept – cApStAn partner When either the OECD or GESIS—the Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences—organise a methodological seminar, it is an opportunity to learn something from authoritative sources and to test one’s working assumptions with experts from the field. When OECD and GESIS join forces to organize such a seminar, one knows in …

“Looking at Comparability from the Vantage Point of Translation and Adaptation”