Open Assessment Technologies (OAT), a long-standing partner and trusted advisor to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) since 2007 for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey, will provide its state-of-the-art assessment delivery platform, TAO, for PISA 2025.
Collaborating with the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and cApStAn, OAT’s role will include custom developments of the TAO Enterprise assessment platform, as well as providing cloud hosting and campaign support. Through TAO, OAT will bring the latest best-in-class assessment technology to modernize PISA by providing a fully accessible, WCAG 2.1 AA and GDPR-compliant testing platform that is standards-based and leverages the seamless scalability and security of TAO Cloud™, the world’s leading cloud-based assessment solution. The use of TAO for PISA will also provide greater flexibility for participating countries to choose from cloud-based online test delivery or offline delivery methods.
“PISA has been a part of our DNA since day one, and we are delighted to be involved in the program again,” says Marc Oswald, Co-founder and CEO of Open Assessment Technologies. “Over the last 10 years, we’ve built a global business in which supporting large-scale, complex assessment programs has become a core competency of our team. Now, we look forward to bringing the collective foundational experience that we’ve accumulated to move PISA forward for the 21st century.”
Conducted every three years since 2000, PISA is a leading international survey that measures 15-year-old students’ ability to apply their knowledge and skills to real-life problems and situations. In addition to measuring performance in reading, mathematics, and science, each PISA cycle also assesses student proficiency in an ‘innovative domain’. The PISA 2025 innovative domain of ‘Learning in the Digital World’ will examine the extent to which students can use digital resources to solve 21st-century problems computationally. The PISA 2025 cycle will also include, for the first time, an optional assessment of foreign languages, which will be offered every two PISA cycles, to allow for the analysis of trends. The foreign language assessment will provide policymakers and educators with comparable results of their students’ foreign language competence and allow them to gain insights into best practices and policies for teaching and learning a foreign language.
Leading the PISA contract is ACER, with whom OAT has previously partnered for several PISA cycles, including in 2009 and 2012. As the broadest international study, TAO’s inherent scalability, interoperability, and accessibility make the platform a natural choice to deliver PISA 2025, the world’s most advanced assessment program.
OAT will provide the TAO platform, on which several testing pilots will take place in 2022, ahead of the field trial in 2024 and the main survey in 2025. OAT will also convert a wide variety of interactive technology-enhanced items and resources, such as multi-media, model-building interactions, advanced simulations, and more, for global standards compliance to enable the creation of tasks that provide contextual learning opportunities for students and meaningful performance insights to stakeholders. cApStAn will guide the translation of the assessment tools to ensure linguistic equivalence across 120+ language variants. The PISA assessments will be delivered in more than 80 countries via TAO.
OAT has a strong track record of supporting PISA and other international OECD assessment programs, such as PIAAC, (the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) a study of adult skills, conducted across 20+ countries in 30+ languages. As the leading global assessment software provider, OAT also partners with the world’s leading Departments and Ministries of Education, such as those in Italy, France, Norway, Lithuania, and Japan, to provide 21st-century assessment solutions along with technical consultancy. OAT looks forward to supporting the upcoming PISA cycle through the TAO assessment platform and collaborating with industry experts to continue to standardize and evolve global assessment programs.
Contact us at https://www.taotesting.com/contact-us/ to learn more.
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