Cross-Classroom and Cross-Institution Item Validation

Anonymous pretesting items for subsequent presentation to participants in a group enable an instructor to validate responses and revise the items accordingly. … The present invention facilitates anonymous pretesting of items in classrooms (and/or other similar settings) to which the item author has no direct access or knowledge. In some enbodiments, pretesting is performed by software used by the instructor/author in his or her own classroom for other tasks. In various implementations, the software shares information with a central clearninghouse anonymously. The central clearinghouse then automatically matches students in the instructor’s class with “relevant” students from other classes – e.g., students that a statistical algorithm predicts will have approximately the same understanding, and will give approximately the same answers, as the instructor’s class. …