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SPONSOR SESSION: Innovation and Evolution in the Assessment Industry

14 March | 3.15pm

Hosted by Surpass Assessment President, Andy McAnulla, we invite you to discuss the recent changes in the assessment industry with our team, following a showcase of the latest features and integrated services for the Surpass Assessment Platform designed to benefit your SMEs and test developers, sharing how modernized technology can give the security and control needed in an assessment program.

Through demonstrations, learn how Surpass provides:

• Customizable test development workflows.
• Streamlined item writing, reviews, standard setting, and rescoring with your SMEs.
• Item version compare and item auditing.
• Psychometric and content tagging of items.
• Advanced item types to provide authentic performance testing.
• LOFT and adaptive delivery models.
• Self-publishing to the Surpass test driver or to other vendors and test drivers.
• High stakes secure browser with internet/offline resilience.
• Practice and formative test options with advanced feedback.

Discover how Surpass members have the ability to sponsor development, so that they can tailor the Surpass platform to the needs and requirements of their advance examinations.

Take advantage of a unique network of partnerships with industry leaders in test development, on-demand and event-based exams, multi-modal test delivery and psychometrics – all working together to create your perfect ‘turnkey’ assessment solution. Hear more about what Surpass has been working on and how we have been innovating new concepts for the assessment industry.

Speakers:

Emma Hall
Andy McAnulla
Paul Muir
John Turner

Surpass Assessment

Family Feud: Psychometricians vs. Exam Owners

14 March| 9.55am

This debate looks to juxtapose the psychometric ‘best practice’ against the exam owners doing what is feasible and in the best interest for their program. Thus, the two sides of the debate will first be two psychometricians, the other side three certification program managers.

Each team or side will be given the opportunity to guess the most common response to each survey question (sent to industry before the conference), as well as a chance to rebut the findings and their thoughts on best practice. While the goal of this debate is not to definitively come to a single solution, rather the focus is to highlight where there are differences of opinion. This session aims to help professionals with different backgrounds and priorities understand each other’s points of view through modeling of useful dialog. This, in turn can, help encourage healthy communications between owners and psychometricians, resulting in better outcomes for everyone.

Speakers:

Casey Johnson
Alpine Testing Solutions

Robert Furter
Physician Assistant Education Association (PAEA)

Crossover Items: Capitalizing on Innovative Item Types That Can Be Designed for and Implemented in Assessments Across Multiple Industries

14 March | 9:55am 

Resource-intensive item types are often sought after due to their increased face validity and measurement accuracy. What if resources can be saved by utilizing items – or underlying development processes – already in use by a testing program in an alternate industry? This presentation reviews 20 different item types, how and where they are currently being used in testing, and how they may be used as crossover items in other industries for valid – yet efficient – measurement.

Speakers:

Amanda Dainis
Dainis and Company, Inc.

John Dight
Surpass Assessment

Dual-Coaching an All Star Team or The International Space Station of Assessment? The Vendor-Client Relationship

14 March | 11:35am

Every company is trying to tackle many elements of their program, from blueprints, candidate engagement, technical challenges, program growth, and so on. Each company cannot do it alone, but there is a balance to partnering with vendors to make it happen. These relationships bring together different cultures, processes, tools and goals. What’s the best metaphor to think about how these parties can work together? How can we manage this relationship and push each other forward through process, technology, and even failures? This session will bring together people who lead the relationship for vendors and clients to talk about the challenges and lessons learned in managing the relationship.

Speakers:

Melissa Billings
NBME (National Board of Medical Examiners)

Andrew Jones
American Board of Surgery

Barry Porter
Surpass Assessment

Sarah Torok
NBME (National Board of Medical Examiners)

Brodie Wise
ITS (Internet Testing Systems)

Intelligent Media Banking: Practical Uses, Considerations, Limitations and Lessons Learned when Incorporating image Recognition AI into your Media Bank

14 March | 4.20pm

If your exam programs rely on large volumes of media assets, you likely know how difficult it can be to maintain the media and find what you need when you need it, during item writing and other crucial test development tasks. Whether you are storing media assets in your item banks or within exclusive D.A.M. (Digital Asset Management) systems, making the assets “search-ready” and available can be challenging for any organization. Item writers and library acquisitions can leave you with plenty of great content that can’t be used until a human (sometimes very expensive humans such as subject matter experts) go through them and apply keyword descriptions and metadata tags. Since your media is only as good as its metadata, it’s only useful if you can find it.

But what if your media could be the metadata? Many organizations are looking for opportunities to make a business case for AI, but it’s important to start with the goal as the problem that AI is intended to solve. Image recognition AI has a great deal of promise for media management, but there is much that is yet to be learned. Learn how one organization approached this exciting and complex technology, review practical use cases setup and results, using the outline below. We’ll conclude by discussing the future of this exciting technology, and expand on some potential future use cases related to other innovations such as automated item generation.

Speakers:

Alexander Podoksik
NBME (National Board of Medical Examiners)

Kieran Hussie
NBME (National Board of Medical Examiners)