The ALTE Code of Practice and Quality Management Checklists
The ALTE Code of Practice (COP) was originally devised to:
a) define the standards that current and future members would
agree to meet in producing their examinations;
b) serve as a statement to users of the examinations of what they
should expect in terms of quality and fairness.
As part of ALTE's approach to Quality Management, the broad areas
of the COP have been redeveloped as detailed questionnaires in
the form of checklists. Since 2001 these checklists have been
used by ALTE Members as part of a procedure to monitor standards
through self-assessment and informal peer monitoring. The
aim is to seek confirmation that minimum professional standards
are being met through a process of self-regulation. The aim is
to identify:
a. Current strengths
b. Areas in need of immediate improvement
c. Areas for long-term development
Hence, in the self-evaluation stage ALTE members go through the
following cycle:
- describing their examination development process by filling
in the checklists;
- making judgements on the aspects of their examination development
by rating aspects as 'in need of improvement', 'adequate' or 'good
practice';
- setting priorities for enhancing the quality of aspects that
are in need of improvement;
- filling in the checklist again, when improvements have been
realised;
- going through this cycle again.
The self-assessment checklists exist in 4 separate units which
can be applied to the 4 aspects of the Test Development and Administration
Cycle:
- Test Design and Construction
- Administration
- Processing - Marking, grading, issue of results
- Analysis and Review
Although the checklists are still under development, they
have already been through several stages of piloting and revision
and are now available on the ALTE web-site for other test developers
to try out. The current version has been put into a spreadsheet
format and contains a glossary of testing terms which is intended
to make them more user-friendly and easier to understand for non-specialists.
(This is based on the ALTE
multilingual glossary of testing terms).
Further developments and revisions will take place in future
and feedback is welcomed. An area under development at present
(2003) is the inclusion of examples of good practice to allow
users to judge for themselves if aspects of their own examination
development meet international standards or are in need of improvement.
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