Testing, testing: IHEs are trying to ensure the success of students by testing their abilities using the latest online assessment software

University Business, April, 2005 by Julie A. Varughese

On the other hand, Blackboard's Anderson says her company's product offers a "more robust assessment experience and ease of use."

FUTURE OF ONLINE ASSESSMENT SOFTWARE

Penn State's Locklin raves, "The really exciting thing about testing is new tests."

Locklin praised Questionmark, calling it an "exciting development." Questionmark is known in the industry for testing students using pictures, not just words, since not everybody learns in the same way. "You may be missing students that really need to see a picture," says Locklin, of word-based assessments.

"Things are much different now than they were five or 10 years ago," says Questionmark's Shepherd. "There are more tests, and people see the advantage of being tested. As our society matures, we see the benefits."

Shepherd anticipates plenty in the future for assessment software, such as better stimulus, videos, sounds, simulations, and better measurement of abilities.

"We don't want to show students a thousand statistics, and we don't want to merely show a pass or fail score," he says. "We want to show what the student did wrong and how they can improve on it. The student then sees the value of it."

RELATED ARTICLE: To fund or not to fund: debating remedial education.

State colleges and universities already had enough on their plates when newly appointed U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced that public IHEs, along with public elementary and secondary schools, would be required to prove they are doing their job: educating students.

Remedial education has spurred a debate among IHEs, faculty and even legislators, especially since more than 76 percent of students are enrolled in public institutions, and approximately two-thirds of those students are matriculated at four-year public schools, according to a 2001 report by the National Center for Education Statistics (nces.ed.gov).

However, the American Council on Education's Center for Policy Analysis (www.acenet.edu) reported that in 1999, 20 percent of freshmen and sophomores said they had taken a remedial course, white 32 percent of all students admitted to enrolling in a remedial course at some point.

And at university systems such as the University of Nevada, where 40 percent of incoming freshmen needed remedial education in the summer and fall of 2004, the stakes are even higher.

The state has notified the university system that it will stop paying for remedial courses at state universities by the 2006 school year, and now the system is moving all its remedial courses to the community colleges in that year, where it will be less expensive to administer the courses.

"It's one of the biggest issues out there for faculty, and every college, including the most selective Ivy Leagues," says Matthew Greene, educational director at Howard Greene & Associates (www.greenesguides.com), a Conn.-based education consulting firm. "Students don't know how to write or read critically."

Legislators argue that remedial courses drain states of funding that could easily go toward other education-related endeavors.