TIMSS 2023: Reaping the Benefits of a Fully Digital TIMSS 2023

• In Event: TIMSS and PIRLS: The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's Global Benchmarks of Achievement

Abstract

"TIMSS 2023 represents a major milestone as the first fully digital assessment in the 28-year history of this international mathematics and science assessment. All participating countries, with only a few exceptions, will use the digital version of the TIMSS 2023 assessment and will be able to enjoy the benefits that technology-based assessments deliver. The presentation will provide a short update on the current state of operations and then directly dive into the innovations that allow TIMSS 2023 to provide more detailed information to educators, stakeholders, and researchers while maintaining a reliable trend measure for comparisons across countries and over time.

Among the many innovations that will be implemented, the presentation will focus on the following five features: The TIMSS 2023 assessment will employ
1) a targeted (group-level adaptive) design to improve the measurement of achievement, providing more reliable estimates of achievement distributions for a wider range of countries,
2) a fully digital assessment that capitalizes on the benefits of technology-based testing, including improved management of the testing session,
3) an assessment that utilizes interactive and engaging features as well as new response formats in innovative item types,
4) an emphasis on collecting process data indicators to contextualize achievement and describe differences among respondents and
5) a range of quality assurance tools such as digital data transmission checks and automated scoring and score evaluation by means of state-of-the-art machine learning and data analytic tools.

These areas of innovation will be illustrated by examples of research studies conducted at the TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center and expected results and benefits of these studies will be discussed in the presentation. The examples will provide insights into how these innovations lead to improvements in ongoing operational work and prepare for new solutions to existing challenges in data collection, analysis, and reporting.
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Author

• Matthias von Davier, Boston College