The ATA 2014 Summer Seminar on Testing Methodology and Assessment Technology Was Held Successfully

Date of Release: August 15, 2014

On August 14, 2014, the ATA-sponsored “How to Provide Service for Candidates in the Mobile Internet Era-2014 Summer Seminar on Testing Methodology and Assessment Technology” was held in Beijing. The Seminar gathered 120 guests of various circles from domestic government agencies, industry associations, higher educational institutions and test sponsors, who held a lively discussion and exchanged views actively around the theme of “How to Provide Service for Candidates in the Mobile Internet Era”.

As the core and main body of testing, candidate is the ultimate target for any testing and assessment, personnel selection as well as talent training and development. In the current era of mobile Internet and big data, the relationship between candidates and test sponsors has been transformed from passive and simple into a much closer one with equal access to information that requires timely and frequent interactions. The development of mobile Internet and new technologies have now made it possible for services such as online registration and payment, electronic admission ticket, real-time cross-platform information delivery, digital certificates, and customized diagnostic reports of candidatesscores , which not only allows candidates to take the test in a simpler, faster and more convenient way,but also  changes the previously simple patterns of testing, thus truly helping the candidates to improve learning effectiveness through  testing.

What do the candidates need most? 

At the Seminar, Mr. Zhao Shuqiu, Vice Executive President of ATA first gave a speech on “How to Provide Better Services to the Candidates”, sharing the results of a survey conducted by ATA for 5,000 candidatestaking different tests with the participants. The survey shows that when candidates take a test, they often have to go through several key steps, such as collecting  information, test selection , registeration and paying test fees, buying textbooks, test preparation, practicing, taking the test, cscore inquiry and applying for a certificate. However, the survey result indicates that in the era where the Internet is highly developed, online searchhas become a major approach and method for candidates to get test information. Due to long-standing factors, test sponsors often attach no importance to the promotion of their test on the Internet. Therefore, information presented by online search is mostly dominated by a large number of training institutions, false phishing sites and third-parties. The candidates thus can not effectively screen the vast amounts of information. Worse still, lots of  candidates had been misled by false and fraudulent information. Besides, their personal information of registration was illegally obtained by the phishing sites, which has brought great distress and problem that most candidates would face in obtaining test information and other aspects. Meanwhile, the survey also shows that candidates are facing many problems when registering and paying the fees, obtaining admission ticket and invoice as well as learning about test centers and other test arrangements. After obtaining the test scores, they know the scores only and can not have visual interpretation and assessment on the effectiveness of their learning. In addition, due to the characteristics of testing, the candidates need not only to spare a long time to prepare, but also spend a lot of time and effort on scores checking, certificate application, verification, annual review, etc. They have no official suggestions for preparation, preparation schedule and other services.

The candidate-oriented survey presents for the first time various problems and puzzles facing the candidates  and enables test sponsors, organizers as well as all organizations and staff engaged in candidates’ service to understand the problems found when providing services to candidates.

How to provide candidates with better services in the mobile Internet era?

To tackle the problems and demands facing candidates in the mobile internet era, ATA proposed a service systemwith candidates as the core, namely, active information push, individually customized services, readily question answering and comprehensive and detailed score diagnosisto better serve the candidates. At the Seminar, Mr. Xu Ke, General Manager of the New Technology R&D Center of ATA also introduced the “Exam Inventory Navigator”, the latest APP specially researched and developed by ATA to provide services for students and guests. Covering 115 tests in 8 categories, the “Exam Inventory Navigator” provides candidates with official, authoritative and timely information that candidates may want to know about the related test and pushes customized messages on a subscription basis. . Meanwhile, it also provides a timeline that reminds candidates of the milestones in their test preparations for the chosen tests. Furthermore, for some tests, candidates can get electronic admission ticket and check their scores on their cell phone via the “Exam Inventory Navigator”. In the future, it’s planned that the “Exam Inventory Navigator” will provide mobile registration and payment, map direction of test sites, inquiry of digital certificates and other functions and services, so as to become an official, timely, comprehensive and intimate assistant for candidates through the cooperation with various test sponsors.

Later, Ms. Wang Qiushi, Senior Consultant of Assessment Institute of ATA, shared the latest ATA achievements in score assessment reports with the guests. The Big Data Analysis not only provides candidates with the overall description of test scores, analysis of the reasons for score loss, historical score comparison and other assessment and analysis, but also enables candidates to know their overall rank, rank in similar groups, scoring rate of knowledge points, change of knowledge grasped, answer time, etc., and even predicts the score of similar tests based on the current score. Through scientific, comprehensive and intuitive score assessment reports, candidates can better understand their test results, thus truly improving their learning effectiveness.

For 15 years, ATA has committed itself to serving test sponsors and candidates with professional testing and assessment services and technologies. Leveraged on world’s leading technologies, long-term experience in test delivery and administration and over 3,000 test centers across the country, ATA has provided professional testing and assessment services for over 400 test titles of government agencies, industrial associations and enterprises as well as tens of millions of candidates.

With a deep understanding of the needs of test candidates, ATA is in constant pursuit of  providing supreme services and ultimate test experience for test candidates. In a mobile era, it’s the future trend to provide candidates with more humanized and multi-dimensional services which run through all the test periods including pre-test, during-test and post-test, and even covers their individual learning and career development.ATA would like to join hands with more test sponsors, to jointly create greater test experience and offer more satisfactory and convenient test servicesfor candidates to continuously improve the quality of testing.

(If there is any inconsistency or conflict between the English and Chinese version, the Chinese version shall prevail.)