Category Archives: Tests and Assessments

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village In the age of “EdTech” are some students being left behind because of lack of access to digital devices? ACT has recently released the results of a 2017 survey of students who took the ACT test, which shows how family income, racial/ethnic background, geography and …

“How the “digital divide” can affect students’ learning”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village As of this summer, students who do not identify as either male or female can request that these classifications be removed for exams. EdExcel, owned by Pearson, is the first major exam board to have made changes to accommodate non-binary pupils. According to the Telegraph, …

“New trends in testing: A levels go gender neutral”

by Steve Dept – cApStAn partner The E-ATP Conference’s baseline is “Transforming Assessments”. This year’s call to action is “Change. Challenge. Transform.” It is the 10th consecutive year that the European arm of the Association of Test Publishers holds its upbeat annual event on the Old Continent. Athens will be this year’s venue: the cradle …

“Adapting Assessments at the E-ATP Conference in Athens”

by Steve Dept – cApStAn partner The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA (see the short PISA video here) is a system-level assessment of knowledge and skills in 15-year old students across the world. In other words, PISA implements (and analyses) internationally standardised assessments of student learning outcomes towards the end of compulsory …

“The PISA 2021 Core D contract awarded to cApStAn”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village A recent study by Bloomberg, based on UN population data, has brought on a resurgence of discussions about the impact of “Generation Z-ers”–also known as Gen Z-ers, iGeneration, Post-Millennials, Homeland Generation, or Plurals–on society. Bloomberg takes 2000-2001 as the “intergenerational cut-off point” and predicts that …

“Generation Z-ers are coming of age and bringing fresh challenges to educators”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village In the past two decades, new standards have been defined for the adaptation of assessment instruments into multiple languages. Sophisticated translation designs have become the norm in international large scale assessments (ILSAs). However, in item development, the “Anglo-Saxon legacy” still prevails: the most common practice …

“Redefining the concept of “master version” in test item development to address the “Anglo-Saxon legacy” and other translation effects”

by Steve Dept – cApStAn partner In some areas, AI may be a hype. Not so for neural machine translation (NMT). On a daily basis, we hear and read about the new threats and opportunities that come with new advances in artificial intelligence (AI). In the field of translation, the advances are real, the opportunities …

“Garbage in, garbage out: feed AI translatable items”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Welcome to the third issue of cApStAn’s monthly newsletter. For those of you who did not see the first two editions, in our newsletter we share news about recent developments in the cApStAn ecosystem as well as snippets of information about and around the linguistics …

“cApStAn June 2018 Newsletter”

by Steve Dept – cApStAn partner The International Test Commission (ITC) is a closely-knit community of researchers and field practitioners who share their work with one another, set up joint research projects and, perhaps most importantly, pool resources to define, streamline and promote best practices in testing. The ITC Guidelines for Translating and Adapting Tests …

“11th Conference of the International Test Commission”

by Steve Dept – cApStAn partner When either the OECD or GESIS—the Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences—organise a methodological seminar, it is an opportunity to learn something from authoritative sources and to test one’s working assumptions with experts from the field. When OECD and GESIS join forces to organize such a seminar, one knows in …

“Looking at Comparability from the Vantage Point of Translation and Adaptation”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Welcome to the second issue of cApStAn’s monthly newsletter. This is our first newsletter after the coming into force, on the 25th of May, of the EU Regulation on Data Protection (GDPR). We at cApStAn have the protection of your personal data very much at …

“cApStAn May 2018 newsletter”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Heading to Paris for the OECD seminar on “Translating and Adapting Instruments in Large Scale Assessments” (June 7-8), and proud to have two cApStAn speakers at this important meeting, designed to foster discussion and “cross-fertilisation of ideas” between different stakeholders: Danina Lupsa, one of our …

“OECD seminar on “Translating and adapting Instruments in Large Scale Assessments””