'Innovative' K-12 Tests: Almost Always Just Around the Corner
Why are so many tests so Scantron?
While the cool kids of education technology were in Austin at SXSWedu, the nerds clustered around each other in Scottsdale, AZ. The occasion? The annual Association of Test Publishers’ Innovations in Testing conference.
In case you think I use “nerd” in a pejorative way, ATP is a die-hard group of psychometricians, data scientists and assessment professionals whose efforts cover testing from grade school through the workplace. The influence of technology in the process was keenly felt among the estimated 1,054 attendees--said to be the most in the conference’s 15-year history.
One key area of change is toward so-called “innovative item types,” questions that eschew the traditional multiple-choice format to incorporate drag-and-drop matching or sequencing, clickable images, video and more. It’s a tech-propelled evolution that takes what can be dry text and turns it into something approaching a problem-solving simulation.
Think language learning exams that require responding to video conversations with native speakers. Imagine images of a leaky faucet that ask to identify where the problem might be, and what tools would be suitable. Envision audio of a human lung to help listeners diagnose what ails it.
Exhibitors ranging from Learnosity (offering embeddable assessments) to Breakthrough Technologies (offering TAO, an open-source testing platform) highlighted advances such as questions with video clips that have clickable “hot spots,” perhaps fittingly developed for a New York City firefighter’s exam.
Yet (spoiler alert) it seems many of these “innovative” question types now have been around for more than a decade, are actively in use in workplace and higher education exams, and are increasingly common to the point that the term for them has morphed into “technology-enhanced items.”
So why are so many K-12 tests still so Scantron?
Three factors kept coming up in my conference conversations, boiled down into the large pots of money, time and appropriateness.
Money
“Research costs may increase as you add these types of items,” notes Breakthrough’s Doug Wilson. Not only is there the cost of creating clear