Developing Digital Assessments         

What knowledge and/or skills will I gain from this course?

The course will focus both on the individual level of a test designer and on the level of the organisation.

At the end of the course, you will:

• be familiar with the different steps of digital language testing.
• be able to make a plan of action to get started with digital language testing.
• know what skills are needed within their team to develop and administer good language tests.
• know what change process will be needed within their organisation to move to digital language testing.
• be able to assess the feasibility of digital language testing within their organisation.

How is this course delivered?

This two-day course is delivered online via Microsoft Teams. It includes four sessions of 3 hours each.

Session 1:

• The pros and cons of digital testing - because there are, both advantages and disadvantages.
• Important prerequisites for digital testing. Digital testing cannot do without infrastructure and has content and organisational prerequisites that must be fulfilled.
• The 3 major steps of digital testing:
• • preparation (creation or authoring phase)
  • test taking (including focus on the candidates’ view)
  • result processing (reporting phase)
• Application of these insights to participants' use cases.

Session 2:

The CREATION or AUTHORING phase in digital language testing

• What can be expected from “digital”: what is possible and what is not?
• How to author digital language test items:
• • digital item writing in general
  • digital item writing for languages
• How to convert my existing (paper based) language tests into digital ones.
• Scoring in digital language testing: automated, semi-automated and human evaluation
• Combining individual items into a digital test: about publishing language tests
• • From a content point of view
  • From a usability point of view
• Application of these insights to participants' use cases

Session 3:

ORGANISING and TAKING the language tests

• Publishing and scheduling digital language tests.
• User and group management
• Test venue and infrastructure - Monitoring and supervising a digital test

• Proctoring a digital test: administering exams remotely
• What can go wrong? And what to do
• Application of these insights to participants’ use cases

Session 4:

The PROCESSING of digital test results

• What kind of digital results can you expect?
• • points, statistics, graphs, insights, psychometric values, extensive log files with detailed user data
• What can you do with the results? What lessons can you learn from digital language test data?
• • about the candidate and the candidates in general
  • about the (quality of your) test
• How can you operationalise those insights to permanently improve your language testing?
• Application of these insights to participants’ use cases

Who is the course tutor?

The course  will be presented by Bert Wylin. Bert has both an academic and a business profile. He has worked at the KU Leuven since 1993, leading the Education Innovation Centre (integrating EdTech in education). In 2001, he founded a KU Leuven university spin-off, now Televic Education, developing and servicing an e-assessment platform. Today, Bert’s focus is on the content side of e-assessment: how does technology best serve the didactic and pedagogical needs of knowledge and skills measurement and assessment?

When is the next course?

The next Developing Digital Assessments course will be in November 2024.

Can several people from the same organisation join this course?

For group bookings, ALTE advises to book a maximum of three places per organisation.

How can I register?

To register for this course, click here.

How can I pay?

Full payment is required on registration. We strongly recommend that payment is made online using a Visa, MasterCard or American Express. However, if it is not possible to pay with a credit/debit card when registering, please contact the ALTE Services Unit (servicesunit@alte.org) to request an invoice with bank transfer payment instructions.