Indianapolis-Based Education Group Offers New Style Of Testing

An Indianapolis-based education group is branching out beyond multiple choice for student exams, as a new assessment offered by the group aims to make testing more appealing for students and employers.

Project Lead The Way offers resources like teacher training and curriculum for engineering, as well as computer and biomedical science. This year the group is rolling out a new end of course assessment that judges what students know, and skills they’ve developed as they’ve progressed through their courses.

CEO Vince Bertram says it has the appeal of a video game, and provides more data than a traditionally modeled test.

“This is a dramatic shift in the way students are assessed,” he says. “This allows us to measure the in-demand transportable skills that are absolutely essential in our economy.”

Students might have to do something like build a bridge with different materials for an engineering problem, while the test monitors which steps they take. The assessment includes several interactive parts, like videos and simulations to assess things like a creativity, problem solving or critical thinking skills.

Those skills are vital for employers and in higher education. Bertram says this assessment will give students a type of currency to market themselves after high school, with more than just a test score.

“What [employers] care about are the skills that you have, and our students have not had a way to demonstrate those skills,” he says. “And now they’re going to.”

Bertram says this game-like style of testing is more engaging for students too, by aligning content with how it might apply in real situations.

“They learn math to solve real-world problems, but unless we can provide them with those real world problems, we have a significant gap in their learning – and it’s not very inspiring,” he says.

Bertram says students will still receive some type of score based on content knowledge, but will also get a look at their proficiency levels in different skill areas.

The new assessment will be offered for up to 400,000 high schoolers in Project Lead The Way programming across the country this year.