@conference {2642, title = {The Implementation of Nationwide High Stakes Computerized (adaptive) Testing in the Netherlands}, booktitle = {IACAT 2017 Conference}, year = {2017}, month = {08/2017}, publisher = {Niigata Seiryo University}, organization = {Niigata Seiryo University}, address = {Niigata, Japan}, abstract = {

In this presentation the challenges of implementation of (adaptive) digital testing in the Facet system in the Netherlands is discussed. In the Netherlands there is a long tradition of implementing adaptive testing in educational settings. Already since the late nineties of the last century adaptive testing was used mostly in low stakes testing. Several CATs were implemented in student monitoring systems for primary education and in the general subjects language and arithmetic in vocational education. The only nationwide implemented high stakes CAT is the WISCAT-pabo: an arithmetic test for students in the first year of primary school teacher colleges. The psychometric advantages of item based adaptive testing are obvious. For example efficiency and high measurement precision. But there are also some disadvantages such as the impossibility of reviewing items during and after the test. During the test the student is not in control of his own test; e.q . he can only navigate forward to the next item. This is one of the reasons other methods of testing, such as multistage-testing, with adaptivity not on the item level but on subtest level, has become more popular to use in high stakes testing.

A main challenge of computerized (adaptive) testing is the implementation of the item bank and the test workflow in a digital system. Since 2014 a nationwide new digital system (Facet) was introduced in the Netherlands, with connections to the digital systems of different parties based on international standards (LTI and QTI). The first nationwide tests in the Facet-system were flexible exams Dutch and arithmetic for vocational (and secondary) education, taken as item response theory-based equated linear multiple forms tests, which are administered during 5 periods in a year. Nowadays there are some implementations of different methods of (multistage) adaptive testing in the same Facet system (DTT en Acet).

In this conference, other presenters of Cito will elaborate on the psychometric characteristics of this other adaptive testing methods. In this contribution, the system architecture and interoperability of the Facet system will be explained. The emphasis is on the implementation and the problems to be solved by using this digital system in all phases of the (adaptive) testing process: item banking, test construction, designing, publication, test taking, analyzing and reporting to the student. An evaluation of the use of the system will be presented.

Session Video

}, keywords = {High stakes CAT, Netherlands, WISCAT}, url = {https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Kn1PvgioUYaOJ5pykq-_XWnwDU15rRsf}, author = {Mia van Boxel and Theo Eggen} }