“Making the world smaller for testing” is on the Association of Test Publishers’ (ATP) new logo to describe the Association’s efforts to reach out and include more participation from outside the U.S. Over 1000 participants from over 15 countries are here, to share best practices and network across four regional divisions and five content divisions – one entirely new: Workforce Skills Credentialing.
Dan Shapero, Head of Careers Products at LinkedIn, offered a powerful keynote address on “The Future Value of Certifications,” challenging ATP participants with findings from LinkedIn’s data trove. Mr. Shapero showed how credentialing is taking place through and beyond testing, with trends like micro-badging and endorsements influencing how people are hiring and being hired on a global scale. He also highlighted gamification of skills testing through companies like pymetrics, whose value proposition is to match people to positions based on their performance on neuroscience-based games.
The addition of the Workforce Skills Credentialing division and the membership of LinkedIn in ATP are sure to shape the Association in a direction with deep implications for K-12 Education, where ensuring college and career readiness has been a major push the past few years in the U.S.
Other ATP 2015 themes relevant to the Education Division include the challenges of effectively updating content, training item writers, and configuring tests to work on a variety of devices. Questar staff is leading sessions in these areas.