5 Most Common Inquiries Made by Educators for Digital SAT

5 Most Common Inquiries Made by Educators for Digital SAT

The College Board announced earlier this year that the SAT Suite of Assessments will go digital. The Digital SAT Exam Format, such as the SAT, PSATTM 10, and PSATTM 8/9, will be more convenient for both test-takers and test-takers to complete, more secure, and more pertinent. As we make this transition, we have had extensive conversations with district and school leaders to ensure they are receiving the knowledge and tools they require to feel confident about the shift to digital.

Here are some of the most common inquiries made by educators:

When will the SAT and PSAT-related exams be available in digital format?

Beginning in the spring of 2023, students who take their exams at weekend testing facilities abroad will use the Digital SAT Exam. Beginning in the fall of 2023, both domestically and internationally, the PSAT/NMSQT, PSAT 8/9, and PSAT 10 will be entirely digital. By the spring of 2024, the SAT Weekend and SAT School Day will follow.

Why should my school make the electronic SAT Suite available?

The SAT Suite is currently a vital component of states', districts', and schools' efforts to prepare students for college and careers across the United States. The digital Suite will continue to equip students for success beyond the classroom, whether they are headed for a two- or four-year college or considering their career options. Access to scholarships and resources for college planning will be made available by the SAT Suite. The student's interests and abilities will provide information on career opportunities. Additionally, the use of digital tests will speed up the delivery of results to educators and students, giving them the data, they need to make important choices.

Research demonstrates that SAT School Day is a significant driver of access and equity and increases the likelihood that low-income and rural students will enrol in college. The majority of students who take the SAT these days do so during SAT School Day.

Moving to digital also gives districts and schools a lot more flexibility and the ability to select a testing window that suits their neighbourhood's needs.

How will my students feel about the online testing process?

The time allotted for each question will increase on the digital exams, which will be about an hour shorter (two hours and 14 minutes as opposed to three). In addition, students can take tests on familiar devices like their own laptops (running Windows or MacOS), iPads, school-owned desktops and laptops, or Chromebooks that are managed by the school. Students will use BluebookTM, the specifically designed digital exam platform by College Board, to take the digital SAT Suite. The app has a built-in graphing calculator, a timer, and a feature for flagging questions for later review. Scratch paper will still be available for students to use.

Over 12,000 students from the US and 75 other nations have so far taken part in research studies and digital SAT Suite pilots. Eighty per cent of those who took the test said they felt the digital SAT was less stressful than the paper-and-pencil version.

For students who need accommodations, we'll continue to offer the full range of services, including extra time and braille testing.

What about the test administrators' experience?

Going digital means, no more packing, sorting, or shipping of paper testing materials, which results in shorter tests and shorter test days. Nearly 90% of the proctors who participated in the digital pilots said the digital administration was preferable to the paper and pencil test.

Test Day Toolkit, our web application for test centre management, will be used by test coordinators and proctors to conduct the digital PSAT-related exams and the SAT on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

What happens if my students run into tech problems?

The exam application for the Bluebook is designed to withstand internet outages. Students will be able to complete the test without interruption even if the internet goes out during it.

Students can plug in, restart their computers, and continue where they left off if they notice that the battery is running low. They won't waste any testing time, and their work will be saved.

On test day, our committed customer service representatives will address problems with students and testing facilities. We're also introducing a brand-new position called "technology monitor" for each centre. Additional assistance will be given by this designated person.

Adaptive Multistage Testing

College Board is switching from a linear testing model to an adaptive one as the primary mode of administration for the digital SAT Suite. During linear testing, the conventional- For the SAT Suite, a student is given a test form with a set list of questions that are not altered based on how well the student performs on the exam. The ability to precisely control the content that is presented to students makes linear tests of this type appealing to test developers, but they also have significant drawbacks.

In addition to being lengthy, linear test forms are weak in terms of test security. This is because the test creators who created such a form cannot make any To measure any student's achievement accurately, the test must contain questions that span the entire range of the specified difficulty. This is because the test maker makes assumptions about the level of achievement of the students.

In a real sense, a linear test form functions as a "one-size-fits-all" testing model; it is effective and time-tested, but it is ineffective both at scale and for specific students.

Contrarily, in an adaptive test model, the test delivery platform alters the level of difficulty of the questions presented to students during the test based on each test taker's performance. These modifications aid in ensuring that on test day, questions are given to each student at a level of difficulty appropriate to their level of achievement.

Adaptive testing tailors question delivery to what the test delivery platform "learns" about a particular student during the exam, in contrast to linear testing, which frequently results in students (especially those at the high and low ends of the score distribution) being given questions that are either too easy or too hard for them. Adaptive testing permits shorter tests due to its more precise targeting of student achievement levels.

Digital testing typically involves one of two types of adaptivity. In a question-by-question adaptive model, the test delivery platform modifies the level of difficulty of the questions that are given to students as they take the exam.

Integrated Pretesting

Embedded pretesting is another feature of the digital SAT Suite's design. A small number of operational (scored) questions are mixed in with the operational (unscored) questions during embedded pretesting. These pretest questions are identical to the operational questions on which students' scores are based, even though they are not graded. This guarantees that students give these questions their full attention and effort, which raises the predictive power of the results from the pretest statistics.

To prevent students from being unduly burdened with answering questions that do not affect their score, the College Board keeps the number of pretest questions in each test form as low as possible while still maintaining the same level of accessibility for a student with a long-lasting, high-quality digital SAT Suite testing experience.

For further information about the Digital SAT Exam Dates please contact us at info@masterclassspace.com or visit Masterclass Space!