An InformationWeek article discussing the potential of Turning Technologies Triton data collection solution for student testing.

1. Could the humble clicker be a simpler and more reliable way
of digitizing testing in schools across America?
Turning Technologies sees an opportunity to promote a
variation on the handheld devices typically used to informally
poll groups of people: as a cheaper and more reliable
alternative to computer-based testing, which recently has
hit some rough spots in the states that have been the most
aggressive about implementing it.
Turning’s Triton Data Collection System allows a handheld
clicker to be used in place of the color-in-the-bubble paper
tests that generations of students became familiar with as a
way of completing tests. The questions can still be delivered
on paper, and students answer at their own pace, using the
clicker’s simple keypad. It’s a slightly more advanced take on
the clicker’s use as a way for instructors to get quick feedback
on questions posed to the class.
The clicker is “an older technology, but it’s absolutely dead-on
reliable,” Tina Rooks, Turning’s senior VP and chief instruction
officer said in an interview.
Reliability has not been a hallmark of automated testing
that relies on PCs connecting to servers over the Internet,
as Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota and Oklahoma found out
this year. “Thousands of students experienced slow loading
times of test questions, students were closed out of testing
in mid-answer, and some were unable to log in to the tests,”
EducationWeek reported. “Hundreds, if not thousands, of
tests may be invalidated. The difficulties prompted all three
states’ education departments to extend testing windows,
made some state lawmakers and policymakers reconsider the
idea of online testing, and sent district officials into a tailspin.”
The issues were particularly pronounced in Indiana, where
testing was interrupted for an estimated 80,000 Indiana
students; an additional 67,000 also were said to have
encountered some disruption in the process of taking the
state’s standardized assessment.
“We use technology a lot, so we recognize there are going to
be glitches. But this was not just a glitch -- it was a complete
breakdown,” said Krista Stockman, public information officer
for the Ft. Wayne Community Schools.
The source of the problems in Indiana was apparently server
overload. When the assessment provider, CBT/McGraw-
Hill, was called on the carpet at a State Senate hearing, an
apologetic company president Ellen Haley explained that the
load testing and simulations conducted in advance apparently
underestimated the demand that occurred in practice.
Online delivery of standardized tests is being promoted
as the wave of the future, partly thanks to the rise of the
Common Core State Standards initiative and the assessment
design work of a couple of state consortiums, the Smarter
Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for
Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).
The U.S. Department of Education is also supporting the
modernization of test technology.
Yet there are ways of digitizing assessments without making
every student’s performance dependent on the performance
of the network or of a remote server.
The Triton system is designed to be fail-safe and able to work
in “low to no bandwidth” settings. Rather than downloading
a question at a time from a remote server and posting the
response, questions are delivered on paper and stored in
a “triple redundant” scheme -- meaning encrypted answers
are stored on the device, on a “receiver” (a classroom PC that
caches the data) and on a
centralized server. But if the
connection to the server is
interrupted, or the receiver
PC fails, the answers can be
relayed up the chain later.
On the other hand, when
everything is working right,
test results are ready for
analysis just as quickly as
they would be if students
took their tests on PCs.
Rooks argued that’s a
better design for high-
stakes assessments. “At
the moment of testing, it
can’t fail,” so simplicity and
redundancy are important,
she said. The clicker
solution could also be a
lifeline for cash-strapped
school systems wondering where the money is going to come
from for all the computers and network upgrades required for
online testing. With the clickers, one computer in a room can
support the testing of up to 500 students, she said.
Do Clickers Beat PCs For Testing Students?
Handheld devices typically used for informal polling and quizzes get attention as an
alternative for digital testing, following online testing failures in several states.
Turning Technologies clicker.
David F. Carr
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2. Do Clickers Beat PCs For Testing Students?
Handheld devices typically used for informal polling and quizzes get attention as an
alternative for digital testing, following online testing failures in several states.
Bruce Umpstead, director of Michigan’s Office of Education
Technology & Data Coordination, sees potential for the
technology, at least as a transitional measure. “If there was a
way to use Triton in Indiana, they might not have had as many
problems,” he said.
Under a grant Umpstead administered, Michigan did a pilot
test using an earlier prototype of Turning’s assessment system
for the “quasi-high-stakes” ACT Explorer test, which is a middle
school or early high school test of academic readiness. After
having almost 10,000 out of 100,000 test takers use the
devices successfully, it’s easy to see the solution scaling quickly
to “be used as an interim step toward a full online solution,” he
said.
“This could be less expensive and I believe, in the interim,
more safe and reliable” than going to computer-based testing
prematurely, Umpstead said. “The schools seem to love it.”
Umpstead said it’s not his role to recommend technology
options, but he does oversee programs to help school
systems prepare for the network and system demands of
online testing. Although Michigan schools are already close
to meeting the minimum technical criteria laid down by
the testing consortiums, one of his concerns is to plan for
excess capacity to minimize the likelihood of the kind of
system overloads that occurred in Indiana. Policy makers in
his state and others eventually want to deliver standardized
tests online, so before Turning could play a role in high-
stakes testing it would have to be approved by them as
an alternative, he said. Test publishers would also have to
support the use of the device.
Meanwhile, Umpstead said he would be interested in
promoting further evaluation of the usefulness of the devices
but does not currently have funding to do so.
Wendy Zdeb-Roper, executive director of the Michigan
Association of Secondary School Principals, said the members
of her association are also interested, partly because “there’s
a lot of concern about schools not being ready with their
bandwidth” for online testing.
Both Umpstead and Zbeb-Roper said their interest was not
only in high-stakes testing but the potential for the devices
to be used in more routine assessments, such as the quiz a
teacher might administer at the end of a day’s lesson. “There
are both short-term and long-term possibilities here,” Zbeb-
Roper said, meaning the clickers could be both a “stopgap”
solution on the way to online testing and a tool for “daily
formative, common assessments.”
Richard Mayberry, a former teacher who now works as a
technology coach for the Lapeer, Mich., schools said it strikes
him as unrealistic to expect that schools will be able to provide
Link to the original article:
http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/
do-clickers-beat-pcs-for-testing-student/240158622#mc_jive
all the computers and all the bandwidth for fully online testing.
In the pilot project he participated in with the Turning clickers,
there was one small glitch where a student’s data wasn’t
transmitted correctly, but it was still stored on the device and
available for upload. “It’s got that redundancy in it, and that’s
comforting,” Mayberry said.
From the student’s perspective, the experience was “pretty
much the same” as a traditional bubble test, although some
rated it an improvement, Mayberry said. “It certainly wasn’t
any worse than paper and pencil,” he said, and for the test
administrators it was better because they got the answers
immediately.
Rooks acknowledged Turning must fight the perception that
clickers are boring, old technology, soon to be made obsolete
by the bring-your-own-device trend in mobile technology.
Yet students who have phone batteries die or their mobile
Internet connections fade halfway through a test might want
to learn to have a little more respect for the lowly clicker,
which can be delivered fully charged and need only enough
wireless bandwidth to connect to a computer on the other
side of the room.
When it comes to test technology, boring is good. The kind of
excitement they had in Indiana is just what you don’t want.
Follow David F. Carr at @davidfcarr or Google+,
along with @IWKEducation.