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1EdTech Consortium Announces State of Minnesota Adoption of Open Interoperability Standards for Item and Test Development and Delivery

1EdTech Consortium Announces State of Minnesota Adoption of Open Interoperability Standards for Item and Test Development and Delivery

 


The Minnesota Department of Education and Pearson adopt open standards for new assessment system

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Lake Mary, USA – 2 April 2014 – The 1EdTech Consortium, the world’s leading educational technology standards setting collaborative, today announced the most recent adoption of open standards for exchanging assessment items and tests.  1EdTech member organizations, the Minnesota Department of Education and Pearson will be working together to deploy a new state assessment system based on the QTITM/APIPTM open standards from 1EdTech Consortium.

On January 17, 2014 the Minnesota Department of Education announced selection of Pearson as the new vendor to administer the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments for grades three through seven, as well as the new grade eight and grade 10 assessments.

According to MDE education supervisor, Cheryl Alcaya,  “With this collaboration, MDE and its contractor(s) are committed to the interoperability and accessibility of digital test content under the framework of the Accessible Portable Item Protocol™ (APIP™) standard. The APIP standard ensures that tests delivered on computers may be taken by the greatest number of students possible and that State-developed test items are no longer locked into a proprietary test administration system.”

Learn more about the APIP standard (/apip/apipfaqs.html).

The APIP standard is based on the 1EdTech Question and Test Interoperability™ (QTI™) standard.  It was also recently announced by 1EdTech that many of the world’s leading providers of assessment products are participating in development of and conformance certification to the QTI/APIP standards.

“The time has come for transition to electronic assessment to replace paper assessment for the very obvious benefits of reduced processing cost and reduced turnaround time,” said Dr. Rob Abel, Chief Executive of 1EdTech. “However, without interoperability of assessment items, tests, and data the benefits of moving to e-assessment are not as great as they could be because educational authorities become locked into proprietary formats and systems with higher operating costs in the long run. Thanks to leadership from the 1EdTech community the transition to e-assessment is now enabled with leading edge interoperability specifications and conformance certification to  ensure high levels of out-of-the-box interoperability.”

"Through the use of common open standards, rather than proprietary schema or systems, the exchange of content and data among states, consortia and vendors is greatly facilitated. We are designing our next generation technology platforms to adhere to these standards and look forward to working with 1EdTech to certify them on the latest QTI and APIP specifications." - Wayne Ostler, Vice President, Digital Content & Measurement Systems, Pearson.

About 1EdTech Consortium (1EdTech)
1EdTech is a nonprofit organization that advances technology that can affordably scale and improve educational participation and attainment. 1EdTech members are leading suppliers, institutions and government organizations that are enabling the future of education by collaborating on interoperability and adoption initiatives. 1EdTech sponsors Learning Impact: A global awards program & conference to recognize the impact of innovative technology on educational access, affordability, and quality. For more information visit imsglobal.org