Computers can directly speed up and streamline authentic assessments … allowing a kindergarten teacher, a corporate president, or any ad hoc community group to develop customized, state-of-the-art, standardized exams. Just fill the question “bank” with suitable items – taking into consideration the sex, culture, and principal language of the people being tested – and off you go. By demystifying the creation, calibration, and scoring of tests like these, Assessment Systems Corporation indirectly takes a stride toward liberating society from the unidimensional standard that has ruled the testing industry for decades … Champions of testing reform … might now be taken more seriously.
Predictor: Cooper, Carol
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Carol Cooper, a writer for The Village Voice, and Perry Halkitis, director of statistics and computer services for the Professional Examination Service, cover the implications of computer-adaptive testing (CAT) and its potential for the future. They write:”Often, computers can directly speed up and streamline authentic assessments in ways that ultimately render unidimensional, multiple-choice models obsolete. At its headquarters in Minnesota, Assessment Systems Corporation has been pioneering standardized testing software for 15 years. The company had to wait awhile for the size and cost of the hardware to come down to more consumer-friendly proportions, but now it is perfectly positioned to capitalize on the boom in microcomputer-assisted mental measurement. Its ads in trade magazines trumpet: ‘The dream is alive! Computerized testing is being implemented right now!’ And indeed, what the company has come up with is the ultimate in do-it-yourself testing software, allowing a kindergarten teacher, a corporate president, or any ad hoc community group to develop customized, state-of-the-art, standardized exams. Just fill the question ‘bank’ with suitable items – taking into consideration the sex, culture, and principal language of the people being tested – and off you go. By demystifying the creation, calibration, and scoring of tests like these, Assessment Systems Corporation indirectly takes a stride toward liberating society from the unidimensional standard that has ruled the testing industry for decades. It has put the same tools used by rich, ivory-tower evaluation services within reach of average citizens. Free-market competition and entrepreneurial savvy can do the rest, eventually destroying the hegemony of over-simplified multiple-choice templates. Champions of testing reform, who’ve spent years telling people that sacred cows like the SAT are neither sacrosanct nor infallible, might now be taken more seriously.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: E-learning
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: This Test is for You: Standardized Testing is a Communal Rite of Passage. Computer-Adaptive Testing is About to Make Those Rites Very Individual
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.01/adaptive_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney