Optimum Assesment Platform: The ultimate assessment experience.
A digital assessment tool is an indispensable addition for organizations that focus on testing knowledge, skills and competencies within their development and training processes. An assessment tool supports the complete testing process from development, planning and administration to correction and analysis. Furthermore, the tool reduces fraud, increases workflow efficiency, is fully scalable and safeguards and improves the quality of the tests and the value of certificates and diplomas. Rowan van Swieten, senior consultant business development at Optimum Assessment, explains why a digital assessment tool cannot be missed.
“When it comes to testing, especially summative testing – where a degree or certificate is at stake – you want to use a platform that provides candidates with an optimal testing experience,” Rowan says. “Learning management systems (LMS) or other E-learning platforms are essentially not designed for this. With these platforms, the focus is on providing and transferring knowledge and tracking training progress, with a lot of formative testing in particular. If you want high-level testing, a digital assessment tool provides full support, because the platform is specifically designed to enhance the testing process.”
A digital assessment tool provides certifying bodies with more information about the quality of the test, its associated content such as questions and answer options, and its difficulty. Certifying bodies can perform psychometric analyses after each test moment based on the results. In this way it can be determined whether the test meets all criteria in terms of validity, reliability, specificity, difficulty, discriminatory ability, transparency, (language) technical quality and test quality. On the basis of this data, a test can be adapted so that it is better suited to the teaching material.
It is not just the quality of a test that is essential for certifying bodies and trainers. Integrity is at least as important. After all, a certificate or diploma has as much value as the credibility of the educator or training program, and thus directly affects the candidate’s career. What negative consequences fraud can have proved the past. Due to the (in)direct manipulation of test results, the image of several organizations was dented and diplomas and certificates were worth nothing in one fell swoop on the labor market. A digital assessment tool significantly reduces the risk of fraud through various applications within the entire assessment process, from creation to supervision. Rowan: “With a digital assessment tool you can easily create different variants of a test. Different aspects of the test such as the questions, answer variants or the order of questions and answers then differ per student, per group or per period. An assessment tool even offers the possibility of generating a unique test for each candidate. Because of the exclusivity of the test content, sharing test questions and corresponding answers makes no sense if others get very different questions.” Fraud is also limited during the administration of the test by real-time physical and digital monitoring or a combination of these, where the test session can be recorded and viewed afterwards. Furthermore, restrictions can also be imposed through the use of lockdown browsers, for example. Rowan: “Through the combination of different applications, we virtually eliminate question leakage and thus prevent fraud.”
A digital assessment tool also helps organizations set up work processes more efficiently. Rowan: “Several people, inside or outside an organization, can work simultaneously on the same test or different tests in the same platform. This makes action lists in different places or endless e-mail exchanges a thing of the past. In an assessment tool, everyone’s workload is clearly visible, on the basis of which you can then steer and plan. In addition, you can configure who has access to which part of the platform per user based on an extensive role and rights structure. This allows users to focus on what they need to find or do, such as creating or checking the questions. Because the complete process takes place in one closed environment, you not only work more efficiently but certainly more securely.”
Digital assessment tools allow for adaptive testing. The system adapts itself to the knowledge level of the candidate. Rowan: “Suppose a candidate answers a number of questions of a certain knowledge level well, then the system automatically offers questions of a higher level. This way, the test platform determines the knowledge level of the candidate during the test. As a result, the test better matches the level and your training body has a clean picture of a candidate’s knowledge.”
In addition to the ability to test digitally, , a digital assessment tool also offers the option of paper-based testing. Rowan explains: “The recording, creation, review and analysis is digital, only the taking takes place on paper. Organizations that wish to do so can print the test. The completed exams can then be scanned, after which the review can be continued digitally, just like the rest of the testing process. This provides flexibility for organizations and candidates”.
A digital assessment tool also has clear added value for those taking the test. A digital test is generally user-friendly and low-threshold, allowing the candidate to focus only on the test. A test should, as far as possible, take place under the same conditions for everyone. For this purpose, a digital assessment tool offers possibilities to support candidates with audiovisual limitations. Think, for example, of text-to-speech options, changing the font size and color reproduction.
A digital assessment tool is an essential complement to an existing LMS for improving the learning and development process. It provides specialized features that improve test quality, prevent fraud and enable adaptive assessment. Says Rowan, “Ensuring test quality preserves the value of certificates, diplomas and thus the certifying authority. Anyone who wants to keep testing in their organization continuously up-to-date and secure cannot ignore a digital assessment tool.”
