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MCU ELC NEWSLETTER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SERIES… PE Testing Update? From Joe Lavallee Whither the PE test? About two years ago, MCU decided to transform the PE test into a computer-adaptive English proficiency exam (the ‘ECAT’) delivered on MCU’s internally developed Online Testing System (OTS). This decision was made in response to demands from other stakeholders within the university and by Taiwan’s MOE (see below) for information on the English proficiency of MCU students. At the present, however, it doesn’t seem likely that the future PE test will make use of either OTS or ECAT. Here’s why. The most serious problem related to computer-adaptive testing is that of security. Since, with CATs, every student gets a different exam, a very large number of items is exposed in each testing period (13,000 students taking, say, 20 item CATs would mean exposing 260,000 items – or exposing our entire item bank many times over). If enough students took part in a campaign to remember 1-2 items each for future test preparation purposes, the test would soon be compromised. Since MCU began planning the ECAT, both the TOEFL and the GRE decided to abandon CATs, because of these sorts of security issues (though GRE has since changed its mind yet again). There are also problems with the idea of replacing our achievement test with a proficiency test. In the first place, a proficiency test might not be accurate enough to measure the gains made by our students from semester to semester. Switching to a system based entirely on proficiency testing would also run counter to the clearly expressed desire of ELC teachers for an exam which tests what is being taught in their classrooms. Since other methods of estimating proficiency exist, there seems little reason to move towards a solely proficiency-based system. Finally, although the university remains very serious about online testing, the future of the OTS is also in doubt. The programmer in charge of the project has been mo