Benefits of Computerizing Your Assessments Developed by: Eric Shepherd

Benefits of Computerizing Your Assessments  Objective: To provide information as to how computerizing your assessments with the right hardware and software can bring you the benefits you deserve and desire.

In Olden Days We Tested With Paper Because:  It was familiar  There were enough trees left  Powerful software didn’t exist  Old networks had poor security  We all had access to a photocopier  We didn’t have sufficient computers But are these good enough reasons to continue?

The Paradigm Shift  The Internet  Better networks  Powerful software  Inexpensive computers  More at-a-distance education  Higher expectations of test validity  Just-in-time education requirements

A Definition of Insanity ….doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results!  By continuing to test with paper, we will not: Help our environment Improve the education process Deliver and obtain immediate results Provide easy access to archived results Supply useful information to our students

Success in Education  Let students know how they are doing with immediate feedback it’s motivational it helps them focus guides student to success student prefer computers to paper informs them when they need to work harder

Let’s Improve our Teaching  Analyze results to guide and improve our teaching. i.e. which subjects need more and/or less attention  Everyone expects to be able to monitor performance quickly, easily and online  Students are our customers Let’s help them succeed

Let’s Improve Assessments  Easier to determine reliability and validity  Distinguish powerful vs ineffectual questions  Stop items becoming public knowledge Limited exposure of items Present: u min. # of questions with adaptive testing u a random # from a bank of questions u a single question from a bank  Compare results over time

Computerized Assessments  More question types can be easily scored  Question-by-question feedback Promotes understanding Links to learning resources Motivates active learning  Score band feedback Feedback based on % score Helps students improve Links to web pages

Get Going With Powerful Authoring Software  Organizing questions for easy reuse  More question types to provide more dynamic assessments  Randomized tests makes retakes easier  Choice shuffling Reduces cheating No more, “if in doubt select option 3” Eliminates work in positioning choices

Saves time & money  No buying expensive answer sheets  No scanning of answer sheets  No manual distribution  No scoring by hand  No copying

The “How To Guide”  Determine how secure your quizzes/tests needs to be: Review “Low, Medium, High Stakes Assessment” training module  Decide how you want to deliver your tests Via a web server and browser Via floppy disks Via a file server

The “How To Guide” continued  For medium and high stakes testing: Enter student roster Distribute passwords to students Set up time window for tests

The “How To Guide” continued  Select your software based on: Ease of authoring Import features Randomized questions from question bank Shuffling choices Reporting features Jumps and adaptive testing Security features Delivery method (see next slide)

The “How To Guide” continued  Intranet, Internet with Web browsers u Netscape version 2, 3 or 4 u Internet Explorer 2, 3 or 4  Delivery Options Local Area Network (LAN) u Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT u Macintosh

The “How To Guide” continued  Import or enter your questions  Try out your tests for quality assurance  Administer to participants  Analyze results How candidates scored Check on question quality

Thank you for your attention Thank you for your time and attention. We hope you have enjoyed learning about the Benefits of Computerizing Your Assessments. We at Question Mark strive to improve our products and services. To let us know how you felt about this presentation, visit our North American home page and complete the Learning Center Survey: Question Mark provides numerous presentations to help our customers, and prospective customers, successfully deploy computerized assessments. We provide public “web-seminars” that use a combination of conference calls and web technology to discuss computerized assessment issues. You can register for a public seminar by going to: For other material that you might find useful, please visit our Learning Center at: Thank you once again. This is the end of the presentation.