CROSS-CLASSROOM AND CROSS-INSTITUTION ITEM VALIDATION

摘要

The present invention facilitates anonymous pretesting of items in classrooms (and/or other similar settings) to which the item author has no direct access or knowledge. In some embodiments, pretesting is performed by software used by the instructor/author in his or her own classroom for other tasks. In various implementations, the software shares information with a central clearinghouse anonymously. The central clearinghouse then automatically matches students in the instructor's class with "relevant" students from other classes- e.g., students that a statistical algorithm predicts will have approximately the same understanding, and will give approximately the same answers, as the instructor's class. To accomplish this matching, embodiments of the invention first identify matching variables.