21st Century Learning

OpenEd Expands its Assessment Bank

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 06/10/15

OpenEd, an education technology company that has built a free and "premium" online repository of standards-aligned digital resources, has added new assessment items in its paid version. The company, which currently has 725,019 assessments, homework assignments, videos and lesson plans in its library, recently added questions from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Assess2Know Benchmark Item Bank and Higher Learning Technology (HLT).

Assess2Know provides items aligned to Common Core State Standards as well as other state standards for grades 2–11 in language arts, reading and literacy; as well as math, science and social studies. HLT has developed a series of test prep apps for Android and iOS — primarily in professional categories such as nursing, but also for the HiSET exam, a high-school equivalency test.

The new additions augment the assessment items available to OpenEd users who pay $9.95 per month for premium access.

In OpenEd, after a student has completed a test for formative assessment, the teacher can view results on mastery charts. The program then recommends specific videos or other assignments for the student based on his or her progress against the learning standards.

According to Tony Sanders, a high school math teacher at Kingsbury School, which serves students with learning differences and ADHD in Washington, D.C., "My students were able to prepare themselves for their final exams because I could push formative assessments to them on their smartphones. They could take those tests, watch videos to relearn what they got wrong and then retake those tests again to improve their scores."