154. Addressing Equity Through Adaptive Assessments with Nathan Thompson

Education Evolution

English - March 21, 2023 08:00 - 37 minutes - 52.1 MB
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Traditional standardized assessments are easy to use because they expect every student to take the exact same test. It’s easy to grade and inexpensive to administer. But these kinds of tests don’t work. They expect mastery at a granular level and don’t account for students who are well above or below the bell curve.

Technology now allows us to administer adaptive assessments, where students are taken on a journey and the test is customized to find out where they excel and where they might need more help.

One person leading this charge with adaptive assessments is Nathan Thompson of Assessment Systems. In this week’s episode, Nathan shares more about the importance of adaptive technology, how we can do better as educators, and other use cases for this technology.

About Nathan Thompson:

Nathan Thompson is CEO and Co-Founder of Assessment Systems, a company driven to improve assessment by making modern psychometrics accessible to more organizations, from adaptive testing to item response theory to automated essay scoring. Nate earned his PhD in Psychometrics from the University of Minnesota, with a focus on AI algorithms in adaptive testing.

Jump in the Conversation:

[1:42] - Where Nathan’s story of impacting education began

[3:11] - What is computerized adaptive technology

[5:20] - Adaptive technology is beneficial for making assessment the right size for every learners

[6:14] - Where we are as a country in adaptive technology

[8:07] - Lots of room for improvement on state assessments

[9:09] - How to make adaptive tests more realistic for teachers

[10:18] - Difference between formative and summative assessments

[11:24] - How to do better as adults

[13:31] - How it works in the real world

[14:20] - How to get started in creating better assessments

[16:00] - Assessments can help people evaluate where they should go in their careers