Mobile testing for authentic assessment in the field: Evaluation from actual performances

We have developed a mobile testing system using adaptive testing for assessing learning at museums, parks, and other sites in the field. Adaptive testing is a form of computer-based testing that progressively estimates an examinee's ability from his/her answer history and uses that ability to present test items making ability estimation even more accurate. Field-testing, however, requires activities such as observing and searching at specific positions within a site, which requires the learner to move about to get to those positions. Moreover, the time that can be spent taking such an on-site test is usually limited, which means that the test may end before a sufficient number of test items can be answered thereby decreasing the accuracy of ability estimation. In response to these issues, we formalize for field-testing purposes an optimization problem called the traveling purchaser problem (TPP) that incorporates graph theory and propose an adaptive testing system using TPP.