As the pandemic continues into another school year for the northern hemisphere, we will continue to see an increase in online proctoring for exams. But more and more, remote proctoring privacy is a concern.
The full video is posted below for anyone concerned with this topic.
The California Department of Human Resources (CalHR, calhr.ca.gov/) has selected Assessment Systems Corporation (ASC, assess.com) as its vendor for an online assessment platform. CalHR is responsible for the personnel selection and hiring of many job roles for the State, and delivers hundreds of thousands of tests per year to job applicants. CalHR seeks to migrate to a modern cloud-based platform that allows it to manage large item banks, quickly publish new test forms, and deliver large-scale assessments that align with modern psychometrics like item response theory (IRT) and computerized adaptive testing (CAT).
ASC’s landmark assessment platform Assess.ai was selected as a solution for this project. ASC has been providing computerized assessment platforms with modern psychometric capabilities since the 1980s, and released Assess.ai in 2019 as a successor to its industry-leading platform FastTest. It includes modules for item authoring, item review, automated item generation, test publishing, online delivery, and automated psychometric reporting.
https://assess.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/employee-assessment-1-scaled.jpg17062560Nathan Thompson, PhDhttps://assess.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2020-ASC-Logo-Clear-300x92.pngNathan Thompson, PhD2021-07-05 22:52:412021-07-05 22:52:41California Department of Human Resources Selects Assessment Systems Corporation as Vendor for Online Assessment Platform
Nathan Thompson, Ph.D., was recently invited to talk about ASC and the future of educational assessment on the Ednorth EdTech Podcast.
EdNorth is an association dedicated to continuing the long history of innovation in educational technology that has been rooted in the Twin Cities of Minnesota (Minneapolis / Saint Paul). Click below to listen online, or find it on Apple or other podcast aggregators.
Dr. Thompson discusses the history of ASC, ASC’s mission to improve assessment with quality psychometrics, and how AI and automation are becoming used more often – even though they’ve been part of the Psychometrics field for a century.
Thank you to Dave Swerdlick and the team at EdNorth for the opportunity to speak!
https://assess.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/microphone-2618102_1920.jpg12801920Nathan Thompson, PhDhttps://assess.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2020-ASC-Logo-Clear-300x92.pngNathan Thompson, PhD2021-06-15 14:02:322021-06-30 10:14:52Learn About Tech Innovation With Dr. Nathan Thompson On The EdNorth EdTech Podcast
Happy birthday to us! We’re 40 years old! To celebrate our 40th birthday, we thought we’d do something big. But before we cheers to the Big 4-0, we want to travel back to 1979.
In the ‘70s, Dr. David J. Weiss and his team at the University of Minnesota were tasked to design and develop the first Computerized Adaptive Test (CAT) for the U.S. Department of Defense. Dr. Weiss, who we lovingly refer to as the Grandfather of Computerized Adaptive Testing, brought this innovation to life. CAT revolutionized testing by making it smarter, faster, and fairer. Ensuring tests are smart, fast, and fair continues to be our mission at Assessment Systems.
40 years later, Dr. Weiss, Dr. Nathan Thompson, and the rest of us here at Assessment Systems continue to push the field of psychometrics forward. To celebrate the last 40 years, we want to share two big Assessment Systems updates.
Assess.ai is built by assessment professionals for assessment professionals. Assess.ai incorporates a number assessment necessities: Item Authoring, Item Banking, 50+ Item Types, and Examinee Management, to name a few. Plus some things you’ve never seen before like Automated Item Generation. Long story short, Assess.ai has been designed specifically to guide you along best practices and sound psychometrics, enabling you to make strong, defensible, and engaging assessments.
Assess.ai is currently in its most basic form; we’re in the process of building additional powerful features and microservices. Click here to get an early look and start using Assess.ai.
40 Has Never Looked This Good
After 40 years, we’ve decided to update our visual identity! This includes a new logo, brand colors, fonts, and a new website. You’ll see these changes on our website, social sites like LinkedIn, and our products.
ASC logos through the years
Our new logo is an evolution of the logos that precede it; anchored with an interpretation of the IRT curve in orange, our new logo represents a more modern, simplified, and accessible visualization of who we are and what we do: we assess. As a data-driven company, we’re relentless in our approach of using data and assessment internally, and passionate about our products and consulting to empower our partners to assess with precision and ease.
We’re proud to release Assess.ai and our new visual identity into the world. We’ve spent 40 years innovating and building stronger and more efficient assessment tools, and we’re looking forward to seeing what we will accomplish in the next 40 years. Thank you for being part of the Assess community. Whether you just read the blogs or you’ve been a partner for years, we’re grateful to celebrate our 40th birthday with you.
https://assess.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Daves-cropped.jpg13271160Adminhttps://assess.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2020-ASC-Logo-Clear-300x92.pngAdmin2019-06-30 22:23:482020-12-22 11:15:59Assessment Systems is 40!
https://assess.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/LeveragingSMEs.jpg400744Adminhttps://assess.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2020-ASC-Logo-Clear-300x92.pngAdmin2019-04-17 16:06:272021-06-15 03:21:05How to Leverage your SMEs to Construct Legally-Defensible Tests with Job Task Analysis
Assessment Systems, international leaders in psychometrics and assessment software, have completed the Service Organization Controls (SOC) 2 Type 2 audit reaffirming its commitment to data security for its employees and client partners.
What is Soc 2 Type 2?
Assessments Systems completed the SOC 2 audit in partnership with A-Lign. A-Lign employs the defined criteria of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) to complete the audit. The audit examined multiple components by which Assessment Systems provides its services including: Infrastructure – physical, IT, and hardware; Software; People – governance and operations; processes – automated and manual; and data – transaction streams, files, databases, and outputs used or processed by a system.
In addition to successfully completing the SOC 2 Type 2 audit, Assessment Systems is proud to continuously innovate and develop features and enhancements for its flagship products – FastTest, Certifior, Iteman and Xcalibre – and the anticipated release of its new assessment platform, Assess.ai. Assess.ai is AI-Driven Assessment and the future of psychometrics and assessments. As international leaders in psychometrics, assessment, and certification programs, Assess.ai is Assessment Systems’ commitment to continuously developing and delivering smarter, faster, and fairer assessments. Click here to stay up to date with Assess.ai developments.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN, September 7, 2018 – Assessment Systems, global leaders in psychometrics and assessment software has added the National Institute of Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) to its growing list of valued partners.
Since 1972, ASE has driven to elevate the quality of vehicle repair and service by assessing and certifying automotive professionals. This partnership joins the power and sophistication of Assessment Systems’ flagship products – FastTest, Iteman and Xcalibre – with ASE’s long standing and renowned certification in the automotive industry.
“Our values align,” said Cassandra Bettenberg, Executive Director of Strategic Partnerships at Assessment Systems, “Like Assessment Systems, ASE values psychometrics and wants to develop and deliver more valid and reliable exams.”
As Assessment Systems continues to diversify its list of partners across industries, they continue to improve their best-in-class assessment technology and their new assessment platform, Assess.ai. Assessment Systems recently earned a spot on the Inc. 5000 – Inc. Magazine’s list of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies – for the second year in a row.
About The National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence The National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence was established in 1972 as a non-profit organization to help improve the quality of automotive service and repair through the voluntary testing and certification of automotive technicians and parts specialists. Today, there are nearly 400,000 ASE- certified professionals at work in dealerships, independent shops, collision repair shops, auto parts stores, fleets, schools and colleges throughout the country.
About Assessment Systems Corporation Assessment Systems is the trusted provider of high-stakes assessment and psychometric services for over 250 partners worldwide, delivering over 2,000,000 assessments every year. Powered by decades of research in psychometrics, Assessment Systems offers best-in-class software platforms and consulting services to support high-quality measurement and completely scalable solutions. Assessment Systems’ success is driven by a commitment to make assessments smarter, faster, and fairer to ensure bad tests don’t hurt good people.
https://assess.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/auto-repair-3691962_1920.jpg10671600Adminhttps://assess.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2020-ASC-Logo-Clear-300x92.pngAdmin2018-09-07 12:34:432020-12-22 11:19:16Assessment Systems Announces New Partnership with The National Institute of Automotive Service Excellence
https://assess.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/email-background.jpg10411600Adminhttps://assess.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2020-ASC-Logo-Clear-300x92.pngAdmin2018-07-02 11:10:262020-03-25 11:35:59Is Psychometric Consulting Right for You?
https://assess.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Test-security-forensics.jpg10531600Adminhttps://assess.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2020-ASC-Logo-Clear-300x92.pngAdmin2018-06-14 15:03:342020-03-25 11:35:23Are test security threats impacting your score validity?
The traditional Learning Management System (LMS) is designed to serve as a portal between educators and their learners. Platforms like Moodle are successful in facilitating cooperative online learning in a number of groundbreaking ways: course management, interactive discussion boards, assignment submissions, and delivery of learning content. While all of this is great, we’ve yet to see an LMS that implements best practices in assessment and psychometrics to ensure that medium or high stakes tests meet international standards.
To put it bluntly, LMS systems have assessment functionality that is usually good enough for short classroom quizzes but falls far short of what is required for a test that is used to award a credential. A white paper on this topic is available here, but some examples include:
Treatment of items as reusable objects
Item metadata and historical use
Collaborative item review and versioning
Test assembly based on psychometrics
Psychometric forensics to search for non-independent test-taking behavior
Deeper score reporting and analytics
Assessment Systems is pleased to announce the launch of an easy-to-use bridge between FastTest and Moodle that will allow users to seamlessly deliver sound assessments from within Moodle while taking advantage of the sophisticated test development and psychometric tools available within FastTest. In addition to seamless delivery for learners, all candidate information is transferred to FastTest, eliminating the examinee import process. The bridge makes use of the international Learning Tools Interoperability standards.
If you are already a FastTest user, watch a step-by-step tutorial on how to establish the connection, in the FastTest User Manual by logging into your FastTest workspace and selecting Manual in the upper right-hand corner. You’ll find the guide in Appendix N.
If you are not yet a FastTest user and would like to discuss how it can improve your assessments while still allowing you to leverage Moodle or other LMS systems for learning content, sign up for a free account here.
