Pearson Vue to showcase e-assessment at Learning Technologies 2009

PEARSON VUE has announced that it will be supporting the Learning Technologies 2009 event at Olympia from the 28-29 January, with both an exhibition stand and a free seminar.

The company is the world leader in computer-based testing, also known as e-assessment, and aims to showcase the many benefits of electronic test delivery over old-fashioned pen and paper tests in assessment programmes. Pearson VUE’s seminar will be presented by business development manager Emma Everitt, and will be entitled “Harnessing e-Assessment”.

Both the seminar and the exhibition stand will give Learning Technologies visitors an overview of the benefits of e-assessment, with a particular focus on test development, test registration, test delivery and security.

Emma Everitt explains: “Companies often invest large budgets in learning and development, and quite rightly so. This is a very technologically developed sector, from psychometrics to sophisticated e-learning methods; and e-assessment fits in perfectly with these. While even the most advanced computer-based assessment programme would only cost at most 10% of any training budget, it is the best way of accurately reflecting the outcomes – and therefore the return on investment – from training.”

Everitt’s seminar will aim to demonstrate how computerised tests can offer a much richer and more interactive candidate experience, with more scope for different “items” (questions or tasks) that better represent the skills being tested and more accurately validate a candidate’s true abilities.

It will also discuss such issues as efficiencies – by eliminating human error and delivery delays, e-assessment gives more robustness and cost savings – and added advantages such as immediate feedback and tests that adapt themselves to each candidate as they go along.

Pearson VUE also aims to use the event to showcase the many security aspects of e-assessment, including e-encryption and item banks with features like pooling and randomisation. This means that, from the creation of every item, through test delivery to the final reporting of results and candidate data, there is minimal risk either of content leaking, candidates cheating, or test-takers’ data going astray.

Pearson VUE’s exhibit at Learning Technologies 2009 will be located at Stand 98.