Category Archives: Tests and Assessments

by Devasmita Ghosh, Enterprise Growth @cApStAn We at cApStAn had the opportunity to attend the ICE Exchange ‘18, Institute of Credentialing Excellence’s annual conference in Austin this November. With 750 attendees, it was a new record for the ICE and the perfect platform for us to meet and learn from the best and the brightest in …

“cApStAn’s experience at the ICE Exchange 2018, Austin”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Globalization and innovative web technologies have removed geographic boundaries and opened new opportunities for awarding bodies, technology certification programs and credentialing organizations.  However, with these opportunities come new challenges:  How do you localize items and assessments so they will reliably measure knowledge, skills and abilities …

“Announcing the joint Questionmark/cApStAn webinar on assessment localization – 8 Nov”

by Steve Dept – cApStAn partner Will AI allow test development, item banking, item localization, validation and multilingual test delivery to all happen in one integrated environment? The AI behind adaptive translation is not the same as the AI behind item generation, but they can work together to build a robust boiler plate in multiple …

“Offline AI and boiler plate approach in multilingual testing”

by Steve Dept – cApStAn partner Dublin, Lisbon, Amsterdam, and now Athens. This was cApStAn’s fourth participation in a conference of the European arm of the Association of Test Publishers (E-ATP). Why would a linguistic quality control agency participate in a test publishers’ conference? A high-level conference at that, with 327 attendees (of which 24 were …

“The Testing Industry, 21st Century Skills and the Medicane”

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 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 Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village As of this summer, students who do not identify as either male or female can request that these classifications be removed for exams. EdExcel, owned by Pearson, is the first major exam board to have made changes to accommodate non-binary pupils. According to the Telegraph, …

“New trends in testing: A levels go gender neutral”

by Steve Dept – cApStAn partner The E-ATP Conference’s baseline is “Transforming Assessments”. This year’s call to action is “Change. Challenge. Transform.” It is the 10th consecutive year that the European arm of the Association of Test Publishers holds its upbeat annual event on the Old Continent. Athens will be this year’s venue: the cradle …

“Adapting Assessments at the E-ATP Conference in Athens”

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 Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village In the past two decades, new standards have been defined for the adaptation of assessment instruments into multiple languages. Sophisticated translation designs have become the norm in international large scale assessments (ILSAs). However, in item development, the “Anglo-Saxon legacy” still prevails: the most common practice …

“Redefining the concept of “master version” in test item development to address the “Anglo-Saxon legacy” and other translation effects”

by Steve Dept – cApStAn partner In some areas, AI may be a hype. Not so for neural machine translation (NMT). On a daily basis, we hear and read about the new threats and opportunities that come with new advances in artificial intelligence (AI). In the field of translation, the advances are real, the opportunities …

“Garbage in, garbage out: feed AI translatable items”