Purdue Testing Services Student Success Programs

Annual Report 2023-24

Mission Statement

The mission of Purdue Testing Services (PTS) is to serve instructors, students and the greater Purdue community by providing testing services for undergraduate advancement, graduate development and professional accreditation. The primary role of PTS is to support instructors and students through the accommodated testing process in partnership with the Disability Resource Center (DRC).

Vision Statement

PTS is responsive to the needs of campus and provides on-time, quality support to facilitate the completion of exams. We aspire to be viewed as experts in our field by campus partners and other institutions.

Program Elements

PTS offers a suite of exams that include:

  • Accommodated Academic Exams
    • Print, package and administer academic exams on behalf of instructors for students with approved accommodations through the DRC.
    • Facilitate the full spectrum of testing accommodations including extended time, distraction-reduced environment, assistive technology, music during exams and alternate furniture.
  • Pearson Exams
    • Evaluation Systems Exams (ES)
      • Teacher licensure exams
    • Executive Assessment (EA)
      • Business school readiness exam
    • Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT)
    • Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) and Fundamentals of Surveying (FS)
      • Engineer licensure exams
    • Microsoft Certification (Microsoft)
      • Specialist and technical certification exams
  • ETS
    • Praxis
      • Teacher licensure exams
    • Graduate Record Examinations (GRE – General)
  • College Board
    • College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) is a series of exams that allow for credit by exam.
    • There are a total of 33 exams across the following categories: Composition and Literature; World Languages; History and Social Science; Science and Mathematics; and Business.
  • Purdue Advanced Credit
    • Biology, Chemistry and Computer Science

Program Goals

  • Every client has a satisfactory experience, including students taking accommodated exams, clients taking vendor exams and instructors who utilize PTS services.
  • Accommodated testing capacity is used more efficiently and effectively. This capacity is defined as space, staffing and time resources.
  • Instructors fully understand their role and choices regarding accommodated testing.
  • The university community becomes more aware of the variety of services offered by PTS, increasing the overall number of exams proctored.
  • A robust communication plan is developed to ensure consistent messaging and marketing to all constituents.
  • All processes and procedures are fully documented.

Notable Changes From 2023-24 Academic Year

  • Through a collaborative effort with the Purdue Memorial Union (PMU) and Registrar staff, PTS has guaranteed the use of Stewart Center's (STEW) third floor rooms for accommodated final exam administration for the next five years.
  • PTS partnered with the Registrar to reserve STEW 314 and 320 on a nightly basis as an additional proctoring location when needed. This arrangement increased the PTS’s nightly capacity from 79 to 151 total seats.
  • PTS proactively partnered with the Registrar and the Center for Instructional Excellence (CIE) to predict dates with high demand for accommodated testing. By analyzing scheduling patterns and peak exam times, PTS anticipated increased testing needs and offered solutions such as reserving additional spaces and utilizing a proctor pool to ensure smooth operations.
  • PTS added two Assistant Directors — Alyssa Culver in January 2024 and Kim Donoho in March 2024.
  • Hannah Donley started as PTS’s Testing Administrator in April 2024.
  • Kelsey Jordan (PTS Director), Bahiyyih Baker (Senior Test Administrator), Donoho and Donley attended the National Collegiate Testing Association (NCTA) conference in August 2024. Jordan presented twice while at the conference: a solo session titled “Accessibility is a Shared Responsibility” and a joint session with Purdue Northwest and RegisterBlast titled “A Multi-Campus Approach to Implementing RegisterBlast at Purdue University.”
  • In response to an internal audit report, PTS is working on the following initiatives:
  • Conduct a comprehensive capacity audit to understand what is needed for PTS to manage proctoring for all accommodated assessments at the West Lafayette campus.
  • Collaborate with CIE to develop a faculty training course on Brightspace for accommodated testing and fully document all processes and procedures to ensure consistency, transparency and compliance.
  • Jordan collaborated with DRC staff to establish accommodated testing services in Indianapolis. This process included reviewing space requirements, processes and procedures for scheduling exams, and language used when communicating with faculty and students.
  • Jordan collaborated with RegisterBlast to yield various enhancements to the system, the most notable being the ability to automatically limit the scheduling of academic exam appointments to only students with approved accommodations through the DRC. As a result of this continued collaboration, Jordan was invited to sit on a panel of five expert users at the RegisterBlast Conference (RBCon) in September 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee. Culver also attended RBCon.
  • Jordan co-founded and co-chairs the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) group on Testing Centers — a group specifically focused on accommodated academic exam proctoring. This group meets monthly, and Jordan leads a data benchmarking project for the group.
  • Jordan took on a three-year commitment to serve as the co-chair for the NCTA Special Interest Group (SIG) on Universal Access. In this role, Jordan serves as an expert for the national organization on matters related to accommodated testing and universal access in the realm of testing centers.
  • The team focused on the growth of accommodated academic testing and was not able to focus on the growth of vendor testing.

Program Assessment

  • Initiate the use of a survey to collect and analyze data on the population served by vendor-based exams to inform decisions about the services PTS provides.
  • Explore and evaluate the experience of students who take accommodated exams with PTS to improve services (e.g. survey students). See if PTS can make use of RegisterBlast for post-exam surveys.
  • Explore and evaluate the experience of instructors who utilize PTS to administer accommodated exams to improve services (e.g. end-of-semester surveys and focus groups). For example, how does PTS measure instructor satisfaction?
  • Use available data to better understand the use of staffing, space and time resources.
  • Determine the demand for accommodated testing across campus and the unmet needs of campus.
  • Determine the need for vendor exams at Purdue and if there are some vendor exams PTS is not offering but should be.
  • Measure the effectiveness of communications with each constituent through the use of web analytics and data from Delivra (email campaign tool).

Our Data

For a full picture of our data from the 2023-24 academic year, please view or download our Full Annual Report by clicking the button below.

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