1EdTech Consortium Announces Workgroup to Evolve and Govern Conformance for Interoperable Accessible Educational Assessment Items
The Accessible Portable Item Protocol (APIP) workgroup will be led by ETS, Measured Progress, and Pearson
Lake Mary, Florida, USA – 5 April 2011 – The 1EdTech Learning Consortium (1EdTech) today announced the formation of an ongoing technical and governance workgroup to manage the evolution of the Accessible Portable Item Protocol (APIP). APIP is a set of interoperability specifications that will enable U.S. states to cooperate on development, use, and exchange of electronic assessment items. APIP was developed under a U.S. Department of Education Enhanced Assessment Grant and based on input from eight state assessment agencies, led by Minnesota. 1EdTech will continue to work in conjunction with the APIP states and the Race to the Top Assessment (RTTA) consortia during the evolution and governance of APIP to ensure that the state’s requirements are met.
The APIP standard combines three 1EdTech specifications that describe interoperable formats of digital assessment items, metadata describing the features of the item to support accommodations, and metadata describing the student’s needs. "We are very appreciative of 1EdTech Contributing Members ETS, Measured Progress, and Pearson investing time and resources into leading the APIP workgroup activity," commented Dr. Rob Abel, Chief Executive of 1EdTech "The conformance and evolution of APIP will be closely coordinated with 1EdTech QTI (Question and Test Interoperability) which is being adopted in other regions around the world.”
“We at Measured Progress are absolutely committed to our role in the 1EdTech consortium and to implementing the APIP standards,” said Martin Borg, President of Measured Progress. “A smooth assessment experience for large-scale programs and for students leads to more useful results and ultimately benefits all students.”
There are three ways for interested organizations to participate in the 1EdTech APIP work. All organizations are invited to review the public drafts, implement to the public drafts, and provide feedback via the 1EdTech web site forums. Organizations that wish to achieve official conformance support and participate in community testing and issue resolution can do so by supporting the QTI2/APIP Alliance on the 1EdTech web site. Assessment organizations that wish to give back to the K-12 community and foster the development and evolution of APIP via the 1EdTech APIP workgroup are invited to support 1EdTech as a Contributing Member organization.
About 1EdTech Consortium www.imsglobal.org
1EdTech Learning is a nonprofit member organization that strives to enable the growth and impact of learning technology in higher education, K-12, and corporate education worldwide. 1EdTech GLC members are leading corporations, educational institutions, school districts and government organizations worldwide that are enabling the future of education by collaborating on interoperability standards and major adoption projects for the digital support of education and learning. 1EdTech GLC also sponsors Learning Impact: a global awards program and conference that recognizes the impact of innovative technology on educational access, affordability, and quality.
