Pearson VUE Test delivery in more than 5,000 test centers in more than 175 countries July 1, 2013 – June 30, 2014 volume: 6,146,782

Athena A test driver A philosophy of configurability Separation of responsibilities Provides interfaces for customization

An organizational model of test delivery responsibilities Selection and Ordering Presentation Evaluation configurability Navigation Rules and Tools Result Data

An illustration….

External Items Sometimes, when there is some specific test item functionality that Athena does not offer natively, a testing program may choose to build an “external item” in order to deliver the needed functionality

External (“pluggable items”) How does it work? External (“pluggable items”) Two APIs COM technologies Flash The item software is called into use by the test driver during delivery Items need to be “well behaved” relative to the responsibilities of test driver Each pluggable item is rigorously tested in coordination with the test driver Native Specification in QTI - Open standard with extensions Support for multiple formats of text, graphics, and media Highly configurable layout

Considerations for innovative items (native and external) Performance Resources needed by the items Deployment (delivery channels) Data produced by the item Item robustness in exception cases Time out Power out Abandonment / candidate “misuse” Ability to be used during a rescore process Accessibility and assistive technologies

Near term future Athena: Browser Edition New external item interface Internet based testing (IBT) test driver Athena desktop as reference implementation New external item interface HTML/HTML5, css, javascript technologies No COM, no Flash Looking forward to expanded delivery models New models: Anywhere Proctored, Remote Proctored New devices: mobile, tablets and “byod”