Technical Manual - Renaissance Learning

IntroductionDesign of STAR Early Literacy Enterprise2. The student’s ability to press the correct key on the keyboard to choose his orher answer, and to remember to press Enter to move on to the next question.Students must demonstrate proficiency in using the mouse or keyboard before thetest will proceed. A student must correctly respond to three hands-on exercisequestions in a row in order to “test out” of the hands-on exercise. To correctlyrespond to a question, the student must have no more than one incorrect keypress or off-target click (not including the Listen button) and must select the targetobject within five seconds after the audio instructions are through playing. Whensoftware detects that the student is having difficulty using the mouse or keyboard,the student will be instructed to ask the teacher for help.Practice SessionAfter satisfactory completion of the hands-on exercise, a short practice testprecedes the assessment itself. As soon as a student has answered three of fivepractice questions correctly, the program takes the student into the actual STAREarly Literacy Enterprise test. Even the youngest students should be able toanswer the practice questions correctly. If the student has not successfullyanswered three questions in the first set of five, a second set of five practicequestions is presented. Only after the student has passed the practice test doesthe actual test begin. Otherwise, STAR Early Literacy Enterprise will halt thetesting session and tell the student to ask the teacher for help.Adaptive Branching/Test LengthSTAR Early Literacy Enterprise’s branching control uses a proprietary approachsomewhat more complex than the simple Rasch maximum information ItemResponse Theory (IRT) model. The approach used in STAR Early LiteracyEnterprise was designed to yield reliable test results by adjusting item difficulty tothe responses of the individual being tested while striving to minimize studentfrustration.In order to minimize student frustration, STAR Early Literacy Enterprise begins thefirst administration of the test with items that have difficulty levels substantiallybelow what a typical student at a given age and grade level can handle. On theaverage, about 90 percent of students will be able to answer the first itemcorrectly. After the first two items, STAR Early Literacy Enterprise strikes a balancebetween student motivation and measurement efficiency by tailoring the choiceof test items such that students answer an average of 75 percent of itemscorrectly. On the second and subsequent administrations, STAR Early LiteracyEnterprise begins testing the student at the level of his or her most recent score,again adjusting the difficulty of the early items to avoid frustration.STAR Early LiteracyTechnical Manual6