NSW public schools are moving towards computer-adaptive tests that will automatically personalise test questions to pinpoint students’ individual capabilities and provide teachers with instant diagnostic feedback.

Educational measurement and school accountability director Dave Wasson said computer-adaptive testing was the future of assessments.

“It is important to increase the efficiency of marking and the immediacy of feedback to students, parents and teachers – it will be a fantastic resource,” he said.

Mr Wasson, who demonstrated the new technology at a recent Office of Schools conference in Sydney, said the move towards computeradaptive assessments would require three phases of development.

Phase one, being trialled this term, was the creation of a searchable database of proven assessment questions from which teachers could build high-quality tests to be printed and distributed to students.

Phase two took the concept to the next level, allowing teachers to compile the test and download it on to a bank of computers for students to access. These tests, like the current computer-based Computer Skills Assessment for Year 6, generated instant results, feedback and a certificate of achievement.

Mr Wasson said phase three, due to roll out in 2010, would be “genuinely computeradaptive”.

“When the student gets an item wrong, the computer searches the database and selects a similar item that’s slightly easier. If the student gets that one right, the computer then selects a slightly harder one,” Mr Wasson said.

Computer-adaptive assessments allowed schools to accurately test students at either end of the achievement spectrum with the same level of certainty that could be applied to middle achievers.

Assistant director Max Smith said: “When you have 40 or maybe 50 questions to ask in numeracy to cover two years of work, the range and depth is limited by choices that have to be made when the test is written and laid out.”

By moving to computeradaptive testing, Dr Smith said the assessment became “more diagnostically relevant, revealing what each student specifically can and can’t do”.

The Essential Secondary Science Assessment’s (ESSA) online practical component provides an example of how interactive testing gives teachers a deeper understanding of students’ capabilities.

The online component replicates a scientific laboratory and poses a real-world problem that students investigate through virtual experiments. Students work through the steps of the investigation online, using information from animations, text and graphics to make decisions and present their findings.

Most of the items within each task are marked electronically and only extended answers requiring written discussion are marked online by teachers.

Dr Smith said the computeradaptive assessments required thousands of items to be stored on the searchable databank, a process that had already begun.

“When we’ve got that, the nature of the questions a student is asked can be dependent upon their last response. The diagnostic capability of this testing will give teachers more information to act on than ever before,” he said.