Resources

Testing students with disabilities often requires providing accommodations so that the testing experience is accessible to these students. What types of accommodations might be necessary for placement testing? Why are "appropriate and reasonable" important considerations? How does the concept of "construct validity" play a key role in determining accommodations? Join in as "The 5 Things You Need to Know About Placement Testing" examines how accommodations are determined for placement testing.

Poorly set cutscores can render a good test invalid. Setting and maintaining cutscores is vital to derive the intended benefits from your placement test, but how should cutscores be set and how do you know if the ones your campus is using are set appropriately? Watch as the "5 Things You Need to Know About Placement Testing" explores the art and science of setting and maintaining cutscores.

If you want to see if someone knows how to use a hammer, you give them a hammer; and if you want to see if someone knows how to write, you ask them to write. This argument is frequently used to justify the use of standardized writing tests over multiple-choice tests for assessing students' writing abilities and readiness for college-level writing classes. However, writing ability is never binary nor objective, and assessing writing is more complicated than it seems. Although standardized writing tests appear authentic, in fact, quite often these tests do a poor job measuring the types of writing skills we value in our writing classes. This webinar explores the five things you need to know about standardized writing exams and why multiple-choice exams are better options for course placement.

Available options for proctoring exams are ever expanding. With the inception of technology-based choices like remote proctoring and increased pressure to deliver exams without proctoring, have you ever wondered what are best practices when it comes to proctoring placement exams? This "5 Things You Need to Know About Placement Testing" webinar will explore proctoring placement exams and the potential impact of different proctoring decisions on the validity and utility of the resulting scores.

Retesting policies for placement tests vary considerably from institution to institution. However, all too often, retest policies are designed to maximize students' satisfaction with their score, but fail to consider the intended purpose of retesting. When determining an appropriate and fair retest policy, it is important for campuses to consider the psychometric objective of retesting, the expected outcomes of a retest, and the potential impact of those outcomes. Join us, as the fourth installment of "5 Things You Need to Know About Placement Testing", turns its attention to the topic of retesting.

Test users routinely place students on the basis of composite scaled scores; however, test users frequently express an interest in receiving diagnostic subscores to better identify students' relative strengths and weaknesses and help them more easily reach their full potential. Unfortunately, what test publishers seldom disclose is that subscores do not provide the information that end users believe they do, and overwhelmingly, the only information subscores can add is mis-information. Tune in as "The 5 Things You Need to Know About Placement Testing" turns its critical eye toward the topic of subscores.

Validation is an important concept in standardized testing; however, the process of validation is different for every exam. Participants in this webinar will learn more about validity in general, as well as about the validation process as it relates to placement testing. Presenters will discuss considerations which are unique to the validation of placement tests, and how validity evidence may be misleading if these considerations are not taken into account. Join us for this innovative new webinar series, "The 5 Things You Need to Know About Placement Testing", which begins with a discussion of the single most important concept in all of testing - validity.