IACAT is holding its 2013 Election over the next few weeks.  This email contains a list of all candidates for open positions on the IACAT board and brief biographies for you to consider when casting your ballot.  In a few days, you will receive an automated email from an online survey system (FastTest Web - watch your Junk Mail folder just in case) with a link to vote online.

 

Vice President

John Barnard

John Barnard is the Executive Director of EPEC Pty Ltd in Australia and professor holding simultaneous positions at the Universities of Sydney and Cape Town. He has three doctorates (mathematics, item response theory and measurement). His interest in online assessment and CAT dates back to the late 80s. He was a founding member of IACAT and served on the Board since 2010 and is a consulting editor of JCAT. He actively promotes IACAT and co-hosted the 2012 conference in Sydney. Prof John J Barnard (D.Ed.;Ph.D.;Ed.D.)   Executive Director: EPEC Pty Ltd       

            

Hua-Hua Chang

Professor Chang's research has focused primarily on improving large scale assessments, specifically on issues emerged from the K-12 accountability testing. His research interests are broad, encompassing both theoretical development and applied methodologies, including Computerized Adaptive Testing, Differential Item Functioning, Cognitive Diagnosis, and asymptotic properties in IRT. Many of his manuscripts were published in top-tier journals, ranging from very theoretical, such as Annals of Statistics, to very applied, such as Journal of Educational Measurement. He is the current President of the Psychometric Society, Editor-in-Chief of Applied Psychological Measurement, and a Fellow of American Educational Research Association. He has been included on the "Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked Excellent by Their Students" for the five consecutive years since 2008.

http://education.illinois.edu/edpsy/people/hhchang

 

Brad Brossman

Brad holds the position of Research Psychometrician at the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM).  He conducts research on and implementing Computer Adaptive Multistage Testing (Ca-MST) for the ABIM examinations; investigating and enhancing the psychometric processes used to calibrate, score, and report the examination results; and collaborating with physicians concerning the psychometric quality and maintenance of the item pools for computer-based testing.

Prior to joining the American Board of Internal Medicine, Brad served as a Research Psychometrician in the TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center at Boston College.  In this capacity, he conducted the operational psychometric components of the TIMSS and PIRLS 2011 administration, including estimating item parameters and aggregating country-level results using matrix sampling and plausible value methodology.  He also conducted research on these international exams, as he sought to enhance the TIMSS and PIRLS 2011 scaling methodology by designing new methods for estimating achievement trends on subdomains, estimating scale linking error, estimating and managing possible administration order effects, and estimating achievement for countries with scores exhibiting low reliability.

Brad graduated from the doctoral program in Educational Measurement and Statistics at the University of Iowa in May, 2010.  Prior to this, he received his B.S. in Mathematics Education from Temple University and his M.A. in Educational Measurement and Statistics at the University of Iowa.

 

Jim Snyder

Director of Market Research, Avant Assessment

Jim Snyder has spent the last 13 years in the student assessment field conducting research and working with educators around the world.  He has presented at conferences throughout the world (EARCOS, CEESA, NESA, WAFLT, ACTFL, Fusion, and AAIE) speaking on how growth measures, longitudinal data and assessment can support educators.  He spent 8 years with the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) focused on competency-based assessment for core content areas. Dr. Snyder joined Avant Assessment in April 2011 to augment their adaptive, competency –based expertise as applied to a wider variety of assessments. He has a BA in physics and mathematics from Kenyon College, an MS in Physics from the University of Oklahoma and an MBA from Portland State University.  He earned an Ed.D. in 2010 from George Fox University and his dissertation was on the use of audio in computerized adaptive assessments.

 

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Europe

Theo Eggen

Theo Eggen is a member of Cito’s Psychometric Research Center. He has major experience in advising on the methodological aspects (research design and data analysis)of educational research and test development, in conducting data analysis, and in multidisciplinary cooperation projects. Besides that, he is full professor of psychometrics at the University of Twente, has expert knowledge of statistical tools and packages, specialized psychometric computer programs, and computer programming. He worked as a consultant in educational measurement at universities, Cito, and internationally. He teaches introductory and specialized courses and has presented many papers at national and international conferences. He is the author of research articles, syllabi, and textbooks. He supervises master and doctoral projects on educational measurement. Theo Eggen’s specializations are: item response theory, quality of tests, national assessment, missing data problems, and computerized adaptive testing.

 

Juan Ramón Barrada 

Juan R. Barrada (Barcelona, 1976) is currently working as an assistant professor in the Universidad de Zaragoza. His main areas of research are computerized adaptive testing, especially item selection rules and test security, and test development and validation. Regarding CATs, he has published in journals like Applied Psychological Measurement (APM), British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, or Methodology, among others. He serves and reviewer  for articles about CATs in journals like APM, Educational and Psychological Measurement, or Journal of Educational Measurement. He is consulting editor of the Journal of Computerized Adaptive Testing.

http://www.unizar.es/barrada/

 

Ardeshir Geranpayeh

Head of Psychometrics & Data Services, Cambridge English Language Assessment

Part of the University of Cambridge, www.cambridgeenglish.org

Dr Ardeshir Geranpayeh is the Head of Psychometrics & Data Services at the Cambridge English Language Assessment, part of the University of Cambridge. He leads a large team of research managers and analysts who carry out the statistical analysis of Cambridge English exams, run the computer-based testing engines and develop the associated IT systems. Ardeshir has been leading on the development and implementation of Cambridge English CAT tests since 2001. He has been instrumental in moving the Cambridge CAT tests to Online platform and introducing methods for the use and calibration of un-pretested items in an online CAT environment, in addition to investigating item cloning. Ardeshir has 24 years’ experience of test validation and has contributed to the design, development, validation, revision and evaluation of many internationally recognised language proficiency tests.  He is a regular presenter and workshop leader in several international conferences such as; National Council on Measurement in EducationAssociation of Test PublishersLanguage Testing Research ColloquiumLanguage Testing Forum, and International Test Commission and has published extensively on cheating and language proficiency testing. His most recent interest is in Automated Assessment of Speaking and Writing.

 

Most recent publication;

Geranpayeh. A. Forthcoming. “Detecting Plagiarism and Cheating” in A.J. Kunnan (Ed.) The Companion to Language Assessment. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.

Geranpayeh, A and Taylor, L (Eds) (2013) Examining Listening: Research and Practice in Assessing Second Language Listening, Studies in Language Testing volume 35, Cambridge: UCLES/Cambridge University Press.

 

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Asia Region

 

 

Indrani Bhaduri

Indrani Bhaduri is Associate Professor in the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), India.

She is Doctorate in Education. Her area of specialization is educational psychology, measurement and evaluation and key interest area is application of Item Response Theory.

She has been involved in teaching, development, extension and research work for the last 20 years. She has planned and coordinated many projects. At present, she coordinates the National Talent Search Examination (NTSE) in India and is associated with the National Achievement Survey. She also acts as a resource person in the capacity building programmes in Educational Measurement and Evaluation. 

Tetsuo Kimura

Tetsuo Kimura is Professor of English, Information Processing, and Psychometrics in the Department of Social Welfare and Psychology, at Niigata Seiryo University in Niigata, Japan. He received a BA in Psychology from Waseda University in 1985, and then attended special courses for English Language, Literature and Education there for another two years. He then received his MA in English Education from Tokyo Gakugei University in 1989. After teaching English and Information Processing at Niigata Seiryo University for 20 years, he then earned his PhD in Human Sciences at Waseda University in 2013. The title of his PhD thesis was "Propositions and the Implementation of Algorithms for Computer Adaptive Tests, Based on Latent Rank Theory."

His research interests include the development of in-house CAT, the psychological aspects of CAT, and the connections between IRT-based test results and can-do statements. In 2011, he received a Presentation Award at the annual conference of the Japan Association for Research on Testing.

He has obtained multi-year Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research as a principal investigator, from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. In 2010-2012, his research focused on the "Development of CAT associated with can-do statements in cooperation with teachers and schools", and in 2013-2015, his focus is "CAT development, paying careful attention to content balance and psychological aspects of the test takers."

He has served as a Board Member of the Pacific Rim Objective Measurement Symposium since 2011, and has also served as Treasurer for the Moodle Association of Japan since 2011. He shares his professional expertise as a reviewer for the Journal of Japan Language Testing.  He has experience in organizing workshops and conferences, such as the 34th Japan Language Testing Association Study Seminar: Tools and Methods for Language Test Data Analysis, Moodle Moot Japan, Introduction to IRT and CAT, and the 29th Annual Convention on English Education. 

He has been a member of IACAT since the time of its founding, and has attended all three past IACAT conferences. He gave presentations on the psychological aspects of CAT at IACAT in 2011 and 2012. He also organized a symposium entitled "A framework and approaches to develop an in-house CAT with freeware and open sources" with Kyung T. Han, Michal Kosinski, and Kojiro Shojima, at the 2012 IACAT conference.

 

natarajan venkatesa

Born in a town inhabited by lawyers to a lawyer and educated in a college turned high school and achieving a unique honour of standing first in the School leaving exam in erstwhile presidency of Madras and becoming a civil structure engineer and turned into education, in general and in exam reform, in particular. Spent long years in driving exam reforms in universities, authoring several books on them and starting a new life in education business, employed in NIIT to advice the HEW (Higher Education Wing), spearheaded two projects; Project simplification and GNIIT. Also tried to found a company egurucool.com, eventually sold it to NIIT and ventured again into another Liqvid.com and presently, ended up as Prof. Emeritus at MeritTrac Services Pvt. Ltd, the largest skills assessment company. Amongst many achievements, holding several patents in statistics, a Vice President of IAEA and driving research and publishing many useful findings and passionate about assessment.

At the Minneapolis Conference on Adaptive Testing presented a paper on How to Use Adaptive Testing in Paper-Pencil Mode and instantly attracted attention from Asia and far East. Since then I am driving CAT in India, in general and in MeritTrac, in particular. Our Research and Development unit had learnt from various researches on CAT and useful findings for implementation making use of all past researches. I am a member of Board of Governors of Chitkara University and advisor to UPSC and SSC on and off.

Needless to say, I am very active into research into examinations. I have so far guided 21 research scholars for their Ph.D., the last two of them; One on the Learning in the Primary School and the other in IRT, Invariance Property on Realistic Data.

 

MOHAMMED HAROON RASHID (Sitara-i-Imtiaz)

Muhammad Haroon Rashid did his PhD in Computer Sciences. His professional services to leading government organizations of Pakistan span over 32 years. He joined Dr. A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories in 1979 and established computing facility of the organization.  In 1985, Dr. Haroon joined National Institute of Electronics (NIE), Islamabad and developed various computer-based systems including Management Information System (MIS). In 1998 Dr. Haroon joined COMSATS as a key member of the core team which established and continued to work in order to bring the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) to a place where it is today with seven campuses and ranks 6th in the public sector universities of the country. Being Pro-rector of CIIT, he is responsible to provide vision and leadership for development and planning of the campuses. His relentless services have been hailed not only within the CIIT but equally so in the education fraternity across the country. 

In order to promote quality education in Pakistan, he established National Testing Service - Pakistan (NTS) which has earned credibility and tested over 3.58 million candidates within a span of eleven years. At NTS, he is promoting computer based and computer adapted tests in the country.

Dr. Haroon is known for his well-articulated thoughts, graceful manners and for assuming a mentoring role for his colleagues and sub-ordinates. He maintains a pleasant personality, pro-people’s welfare, and enjoys great respect among his students and fellow colleagues.  Recently in recognition of his meritorious services to the society, the Government of Pakistan conferred upon him the prestigious national award, “Sitara-i-Imtiaz” (Star of Distinction) in 2012.

 

Prof Vipin K. Chilana

Prof Vipin K. Chilana, works as a Head - Client Relations and Professor (Psychometrics) in IBPS (www.ibps.in) the biggest testing organization in the region. He has been an integral part of IACAT since its conception and has contributed significantly in the field of IRT and CAT through research and dissemination of information.  He has been a pioneer of online applications and online exams in IBPS. He got his first tutorial in CAT from none other than the Dr David Weiss.