2. Pearson VUE Test delivery in more than 5,000 test centers in more than 175 countries
July 1, 2013 – June 30, 2014 volume: 6,146,782

3. Athena A test driver A philosophy of configurability
Separation of responsibilities
Provides interfaces for customization

4. An organizational model of test delivery responsibilities
Selection
and
Ordering
Presentation
Evaluation
configurability
Navigation
Rules and
Tools
Result
Data

5. An illustration….

6. External Items Sometimes, when there is some specific test item functionality that Athena does not offer natively, a testing program may choose to build an “external item” in order to deliver the needed functionality

7. External (“pluggable items”)
How does it work?
External (“pluggable items”)
Two APIs
COM technologies
Flash
The item software is called into use by the test driver during delivery
Items need to be “well behaved” relative to the responsibilities of test driver
Each pluggable item is rigorously tested in coordination with the test driver
Native
Specification in QTI
- Open standard with extensions
Support for multiple formats of text, graphics, and media
Highly configurable layout

8. Considerations for innovative items (native and external)
Performance
Resources needed by the items
Deployment (delivery channels)
Data produced by the item
Item robustness in exception cases
Time out
Power out
Abandonment / candidate “misuse”
Ability to be used during a rescore process
Accessibility and assistive technologies

9. Near term future Athena: Browser Edition New external item interface
Internet based testing (IBT) test driver
Athena desktop as reference implementation
New external item interface
HTML/HTML5, css, javascript technologies
No COM, no Flash
Looking forward to expanded delivery models
New models: Anywhere Proctored, Remote Proctored
New devices: mobile, tablets and “byod”