Pearson VUETest delivery in more than 5,000 test centers in more than 175

countries

Athena

• A test driver

• A philosophy of configurability

• Separation of responsibilities

• Provides interfaces for customization

An organizational model oftest delivery responsibilities

Selectionand

Ordering

Presentation

Evaluation

ResultData

NavigationRules and

Tools

configurability

An illustration….

External Items

Sometimes, when there is some specific test item functionality that Athena does not offer natively, a testing program may choose

to build an “external item” in order to deliver the needed functionality

How does it work?

Native

•Specification in QTI

- Open standard with extensions

•Support for multiple formats of text, graphics, and media

•Highly configurable layout

External (“pluggable items”)

•Two APIs– COM technologies– Flash

•The item software is called into use by the test driver during delivery•Items need to be “well behaved” relative to the responsibilities of test driver•Each pluggable item is rigorously tested in coordination with the test driver

Considerations for innovative items (native and external)

• Performance

• Resources needed by the items

• Deployment (delivery channels)

• Data produced by the item

• Item robustness in exception cases

- Time out

- Power out

- Abandonment / candidate “misuse”

• Ability to be used during a rescore process

• Accessibility and assistive technologies

Near term future

• Athena: Browser Edition

- Internet based testing (IBT) test driver

- Athena desktop as reference implementation

• New external item interface

- HTML/HTML5, css, javascript technologies

- No COM, no Flash

• Looking forward to expanded delivery models

- New models: Anywhere Proctored, Remote Proctored

- New devices: mobile, tablets and “byod”