by Geoffrey Murase, Solutions Marketing, VMware
The push to move from paper and pencil to online testing for state assessments hit a bump in the road earlier this year when the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress Plus or “ISTEP+” state assessment program encountered some problems. Below is an excerpt from an NPR article that summarizes the incident:
“On Monday, April 29, 2013, Indiana students in Grades 3-8 began taking online portions of the state’s standardized test, the ISTEP+. Between 8 and 9 a.m. Eastern, the testing website began locking students out of the exam. Some students were unable to log into their exams. Others were locked out of the testing website during their exams, forcing students to wait in front of “Please Wait” screens featuring an image of a globe — the infamous “globe screen.” In total, the computer problems disrupted around 30,000 testing sessions, state education officials reported. Many districts decided to suspend testing for the day.”
At the time, administrators had a difficult time identifying the root cause of the problem and almost two months later, testing company executives testified that the servers handling the traffic did not have enough memory to support the load. When all was said and done, it was found that over 145,000 tests were flagged as “disrupted” in one way or another. Now the state has hired The National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment to perform an independent analysis of the data and come up with a recommendation. This may ultimately lead to throwing out the results.
This experience accentuates the importance of ensuring the error-free delivery of online testing for these state assessments. What will happen if the results are thrown out? Will students have to retake the test? How will school, teacher, and student performance be measured and how will state funding be allocated?
In this case, the cause of the problem was found to be in the testing servers, not the test delivery system. However, test administrators would similarly question the validity of test results if the test delivery system somehow failed. This is where the value of delivering tests using virtual desktops becomes clear.
In an earlier blog post, I wrote about how VMware has worked closely with online testing industry leader Pearson to achieve “TestNav Qualified” status for delivering online tests in a Horizon View virtual desktop environment. This qualification ensures that online tests can be delivered securely, error-free, and with a good user experience. More specifically, the stringent requirements to achieve TestNav Qualified status include:
- While logging in concurrently, no error messages are received
- The first test item/question of the test loads fully at the same speed as the baseline amount of less than 45 seconds
- While interacting with all test items/questions there are no noticeable curser lags, input lags or delays in tool engagement as compared to the baseline epat
- While interacting with video, audio, and TEI test items/questions there are no significant lags or delays compared to baseline epat
- There is no noticeable delay when navigating from test item/question to test item/question
- All tools work correctly as demonstrated in the baseline ePAT
- At submit, no error message is received
- When hitting submit the response is at the same speed as the baseline amount of 10 seconds
- From “login” to “submit” the desktop is secure and the system does not allow access to any application, content, or other service beyond the TestNav 7.5 test assessment delivery system
- From “login” to “submit” the system does not allow any screen captures, printing, saving or other electronic replication or duplication of the display screen, source code or content of the test
- All data is encrypted between client and server for the entirety of the usage period
Pearson TestNav delivers over 9 million tests annually and ensuring the integrity of the results should be one of the highest priorities for administrators. Delivering Pearson TestNav online tests with VMware® Horizon View™ eliminates the stress of worrying about an “Indiana-like” debacle due to online test delivery errors and lets administrators and teachers focus on what they do best.
Visit us here for more information about VMware’s online testing solution.
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