Are You Ready to Make the Move to Online Testing?

Are You Ready to Make the Move to Online Testing? Make a Seamless Transition with VMware Horizon View Geoff Murase, Sr. Solutions Marketing Manager, VMware

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Agenda

§  Common Core State Standards Initiative Background § Online Testing Status and Challenges §  VMware Horizon View Solution for Online Testing §  Customer Case Studies §  Summary and Next Steps

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Goal and History of the Common Core State Standards

§  Problem Statement •  Inconsistent academic standards across different schools and

states

•  U.S. educational system falling behind globally

§  Goal of Common Core •  Prepare students for college and work

•  All students must be prepared to compete both domestically and globally

§  Common Core Development •  State led, not a federal mandate

•  Work began in summer 2009

•  Multiple rounds of feedback from states, teachers, researchers, higher education, and the general public

•  Final Common Core State Standards released on June 2, 2010

Example: 8th Grade Math Scores

Source: 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study

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Common Core Adoption

87%

of K-12 students in the U.S. live in states that have adopted the Common Core State Standards*

*EdWeek, July 2013

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Common Core Timeline

*EdWeek, July 2013

2014-2015

School year to be digitally ready

for CCSS Online Assessments*

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Example Math Standard and Question

§  Standard • Operations & Algebraic Thinking 5.OA

•  Write and interpret numerical expressions. •  5.OA.1. Use parentheses, brackets, or braces in numerical

expressions, and evaluate expressions with these symbols.

§  Sample Question

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Funding the Common Core Standards

§  “Race to the Top” is a $4.35 billion U.S. Dept. of Education contest created to spur innovation and reforms in state and local district K-12 education

•  Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

•  One of the components of the Race to the Top program involves Standards and Assessments

§  On September 2, 2010, the Secretary of Education announced that it had awarded two groups of states grants to develop a new generation of tests

•  Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC): $170M

•  SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC): $160M

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PARCC Technical Requirements

§  Minimum bandwidth requirements

§  Security •  Control of Internet access

•  No use of cameras (still and video)

•  Disable screen capture (live and recorded)

•  No Email access

§  Devices

•  No access to instant messaging •  No Bluetooth connections •  No application switching •  No printing

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Smarter Balanced Technical Requirements

§  Sep 2012: Awarded Online Testing Platform Contract to American Institutes for Research (AIR)

§  Bandwidth •  Estimate that the Smarter Balanced assessment

will require10–20 Kbps per student or less

§  Custom AIR secure browser download required •  Monitors activity on the computer

•  Stops testing if any other programs run that may compromise the security of the test

§  Devices •  PCs, Macs, tablets, Chromebooks, thin clients,

virtual desktops

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State Consortium Alignment

PARCC

Smarter Balanced

Undetermined

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Agenda


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Online Testing Status – Mindshare

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Online Testing Status – Preparedness

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Online Testing Challenges – Budget and Devices

69% of schools need more district

provided devices*, but only

18% of the technology budget is

spent on hardware* *CDE, September 2013

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Online Testing Challenges – High Availability and Scalability

§  In April 2013, Indiana students in Grades 3-8 began taking online portions of the state’s standardized test, the ISTEP+

§  Between 8 and 9 a.m., the testing website began locking students out of the exam •  Some students were unable to log into their exams

•  Others were locked out of the testing website during their exams, forcing students to wait in front of “Please Wait” screens featuring an image of a globe — the infamous “globe screen”

§  In total, the computer problems disrupted around 30,000 testing sessions

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Agenda


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The Desktop Virtualization Solution

§  Desktop Virtualization • Users access virtual desktops running in the data center

§  Desktop Virtualization for Online Testing Benefits

•  Budget •  Centralized management reduces operational expenses •  Space savings as computer labs can be transformed into

testing centers with limited downtime

• Devices •  Support for a variety of clients including repurposed old PCs

and tablets

•  Availability and Scalability •  Reduced desktop downtime and increased availability •  New users can be up and running quickly

•  Security •  Data and applications reside in secure data centers

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VMware Horizon View Qualification with Pearson

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Pearson TestNav Overview

§  Pearson Education •  PearsonAccess – online assessment

management system

•  TestNav – test delivery system

§ Online browser based testing • No client required

§  TestNav was launched in 2001

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§  Only two vendors have been approved as “TestNav Qualified” •  VMware and Ncomputing

•  NComputing uses a proprietary platform

•  Citrix is not TestNav Qualified

§  Qualification Standards •  No error messages

•  Fast load time

•  No noticeable lag time while interacting

•  No significant lag with video, audio and test items

•  Security from “login” to “submit”

•  No access to other applications or content

•  No screen captures, printing, or saving of the display screen

•  All data is encrypted between client and server for the entirety of the usage period

VMware TestNav Qualification

Additional details can be found at: http://testnavqualified.com/

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Agenda


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Case Study – Aledo Independent School District

Based in Aledo, Texas, Aledo ISD provides K-12

education to a student population of approximately

4,600, with 280 teachers and 145 administrative staff

in nine schools.

“We’ve had tremendous success using VMware

Horizon View for Pearson TestNav. Testing season

brings a lot of stress to not only students but the staff

as well. VMware Horizon View allows IT departments

to facilitate these tests in a high availability

environment, which is extremely comforting.”

  Brooks Moore, DCS Technology Help Desk Manager,

  Aledo Independent School District www.vmware.com/go/AledoVideo

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Case Study – Tyler Independent School District

“In order to provide enough PCs for on-line testing

we’ve had to image our computer labs for testing

which meant losing them for regular instruction until

the testing period was over.

Now, using a VMware Horizon View virtual desktop to

access Pearson TestNav allows us to simply have our

students access the appropriate testing VDI image

during the test.

Now we no longer have to touch the computers labs

for testing and valuable instruction time isn’t lost

as normal use is simply a matter of selecting the

base student image at login. This is a great labor

and instruction saver for our district.”

  John Orbaugh, Director of Technology Services,

  Tyler Independent School District

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Case Study – Coppell Independent School District

“Using VMware Horizon View with the Pearson

TestNav test delivery system ensures that our tests

are administered in a secure environment that

preserves the integrity of the results.

Test environments are booted directly to our

computer labs and if any attempt is made to

escape out of the test, the test taker is locked out

of the test.

We initially rolled out VMware virtual desktops on a

small scale in the Summer of 2012 but with the

success that we’ve had, we now plan on rolling it out

to all computer labs within our district.”

  Chad Branum, Executive Director of Technology

  Coppell Independent School District

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Agenda


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Summary

§  Common Core standards were developed in 2010 to address uneven education performance in the U.S. and prepare students for college and work both domestically and internationally

§  Compliance with Common Core is being driven primarily by the PARCC and SBAC state consortiums with a target for the 2014-2015 school year

§  Challenges with complying with PARCC and SBAC online testing requirements include budget, lack of devices, availability and scalability

§  VMware Horizon View addresses these challenges and offers a proven and validated solution for delivering online testing in a virtual desktop environment

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Next Steps

§  Learn more about VMware’s online testing solution at: •  www.vmware.com/go/K12OnlineTesting

§  Connect with Us: •  VMware Community

•  communities.vmware.com

•  Facebook •  Facebook/horizonview

•  Twitter •  twitter.com/vmwareview

•  LinkedIn •  linkedin.com/groups?gid=65932

Thank You