Improving Multimedia Innovative Item Types for Computer Based Testing

Instead of computer games, animations, cartoons, and videos being used only for entertainment by kids, there is now an interest in using some of these media for educational purposes as well. Along with content creation, multimedia has potential for use in "innovative testing". Rather than traditional paper-and-pencil tests, audio, video and graphics are being conceived as alternative means for more effective testing in the future [1,17,21,28,29,30,33,42,44,49,50]. For example, we would like to use animation and games to help in learning concepts; consider how image, graphics and audio tools can be used for innovative testing; and develop techniques for measuring the impact of multimedia in improving performance or arousing interest in students. In this paper we discuss some examples of multimedia item types for testing, followed by a strategy for adaptive testing using those item types. We also show how techniques for perceptual evaluations can be used to improve strategies for adaptive testing