Building Smart(er) Tests: Facilitating Test-Driven Learning Through Adaptive Solutions

Offentlig prosjektsammendrag

How can we realise better assessment for learning? In other words: how do we create assessments that help learners advance in their path to mastery of a subject? This research question is the prime focus in Inspera's R&D project "Building Smart(er) Tests: Facilitating test-driven learning through adaptive solutions". For decades, e-assessment solutions have focused on assessment of learning, that is, providing insights into student performance. Yet, we believe that tests must serve a pedagogical purpose too. Assessments, homework assignments, and coursework should not only measure performance; rather, they should contribute to the learning process in new, innovative ways. Concurrently, assessments should be balanced, secure, motivational, and reliable. To realise this ambition, Inspera is investing in the development of novel adaptive technologies. Combining insights from cognitive psychology, psychometrics, and deep learning, our three-year R&D project aims to research and implement novel test construction functionalities. Specifically, we aim to develop a comprehensive and adaptive test construction and analysis system for formative and summative assessment that is applicable across K-12, Higher-Ed, and professional certification. At Inspera, we believe that the innovations that we will realise in this project will advance test-driven learning by vastly reducing the costs of test construction. This cost saving is realised through novel functionalities to automatically generate tests from an item bank, to re-purpose over-exposed items, and, more generally, to allow for a more structured process for authoring assessments.