Evaluation of Electronic Assessment Systems and Their Ability to Meet NCATE Standard 2

Abstract

The pressures relating to accountability and data collection, not only from the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) but also from other national organizations, continue to increase the demand for educator preparation programs to systematically collect, analyze, and report on the success of their students and their programs. Many educator preparation programs have turned to electronic assessment systems (EASs) to help ease the data collection burden, to allow for the collection, aggregation, disaggregation, and reporting of data for programmatic improvement, as well as to meet the needs of the accreditation process. The purpose of this study was to explore what types (commercial, in-house, or hybrid) of EASs are currently being used, how important the system components were at the time of system selection, how satisfied the NCATE coordinator or the person most familiar with the system was with the components of the system, and how well they perceive their EAS was able to meet the data collection requirements of NCATE Standard 2. An electronic survey was developed by the researcher and sent to 775 NCATE Coordinators or equivalent as indentified from the institution’s website with 225 participants completing the survey for a response rate of 31%. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to report the data. Results showed that all of the system components identified were considered to be important and in general the respondents were satisfied with the performance of those components. Further analysis did reveal a lower level of satisfaction with the system components when compared to the importance of those same components. Exploration of the ability of systems to meet the data collection requirements of NCATE Standard 2 showed that most respondents indicated their system was capable of meeting those data collection requirements. Further analysis based on the specific type of system, commercial, in-house, or hybrid, did reveal differences in the ability to systematically collect data, faculty access to the data, the ability to aggregate data, the ability to collect multiple assessments, and the costs associated with the systems.