Languages : using wikis to create tests

Authors

A Filipi, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
S Lissonnet

Abstract

The Assessment of Language Competence (ALC) certificate program of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) is an annual testing program in listening and reading comprehension for students from upper primary to senior secondary years of schooling. Until 2008, the development process meant that the entire test as a Word document would be shuttled back and forth between item writers. A review of the processes revealed that maintaining version control was the main difficulty in this distributed writing arrangement. The authors discuss how the use of the Confluence wiki to facilitate the writing and vetting of the ALC test was developed. Despite teething problems, the use of a wiki for the ALC test development has proven to be successful and has been rapidly embraced by writers and vetters. The article also briefly describes the successful application of wikis in the languages classroom. [Author abstract, ed]

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