DATE June 25th - 26th, 2024
LOCATION Virtual
SEATS 500 People
REGISTRATION Free

Empowering educators with the tools to transform today’s learners into tomorrow’s leaders.

We're dedicated to providing the most secure and reliable assessment tools and services through openness and collaboration, with a mission to empower educators with the online tools to transform today’s learners into tomorrow’s leaders.

Join us for TAO Days to connect with a global community of educators and institutions leaders who are driving innovation for the greater good and see our mission come to life. This year's theme is "Exploring New Frontiers in Digital Assessment."


Why Attend?

With the rapid expansion of the TAO community, we’re eager to bring our users together to discuss the trends that are shaping the future of digital assessment and participate in hands-on sessions with our team.
 
TAO Days is our annual end-user conference taking place online over two afternoons this upcoming June 25th and 26th. Open to all digital assessment champions, this event provides an excellent opportunity to take part in innovation fueled discussions surrounding online testing and open source assessment, share program strategies, and connect with a global group of assessment peers. The agenda also includes a mix of practical sessions where you'll have the chance to learn platform best-practices hands-on. 
 
Make sure to register for free to secure your spot at TAO Days. Seats are limited — save yours today before they fill up!

Speaker List At A Glance

Connect with seasoned digital assessment experts across the world and hear about where the future of online testing is headed. Discover the challenges, solutions and trends shaping the industry directly from other online assessment players.

Dr. Samuel Greiff

Head of Research Group, Principal Investigator, and Full Professor of Educational Psychology & Artificial Intelligence |
Goethe-University, Frankfurt

Dr. Renzo Degiovanni

Senior R&T Associate |
Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST)

Laura Casanellas Luri

Chief Technology Officer |
cApStAn Linguistic Quality Control

Steve Dept

Founding Partner |
cApStAn Linguistic Quality Control

Manuel Souto Pico

Lead Translation Technologist | cApStAn Linguistic Quality Control

Dr. Anthony Benners

Innovation Advisor & Senior Psychometrician |
New York City DOE

Marc Oswald

Co-founder & CEO |
Open Assessment Technologies

Dr. Maxine Schaefer

Senior Researcher |
Click Learning

Patrick Plichart

Co-founder & Director of Products |
Open Assessment Technologies

Andre Nunes

Product Marketing Manager |
Open Assessment Technologies

Dragos Ivan

Product Manager |
Open Assessment Technologies

Christophe Noel

Lead Business Analyst |
Open Assessment Technologies

Sergei Mikhailov

Engineering Manager |
Open Assessment Technologies

Gheorghe Dobrogeanu

Program Manager |
Open Assessment Technologies

Pedro Marce Rodriguez

Software Architect |
Open Assessment Technologies

DAYS

2 half-days dedicated to discussing the future of online assessment with your peers

SESSIONS

From users leveraging TAO across the world

SPEAKERS

Featuring digital assessment experts sharing the impact online testing software has made.

SEATS

Register below to secure your spot.

FAQ

Get answers to frequently asked questions below: 

There is no registration cost for TAO Days. Simply fill out the form at the bottom of this page to claim your seat for free. 

 
TAO Days is open to all TAO champions and contributors within the global K12, Higher Education and Professional Advancement sectors.
 
This is your chance to learn from one another, collaborate and gain knowledge for improving your assessment strategies. Your participation will also provide the chance to join the TAO User Group, where you'll have a direct impact in helping to inform the TAO product roadmap based on your needs.


For members of the greater TAO community, the TAO User Group offers an opportunity for you to join forces with TAO users from all corners of the world to spearhead innovations to the TAO platform.

The TAO User Group Governing Board aims to strengthen the open source community by providing a group of TAO liaisons with whom you can share product feedback during various TAO User Group meetings. 

TAO's User Group meetings are open to the public, and information on how to become involved will be made available during TAO Days. Make sure to register for the event below if you are interested in learning more. 

As the providers of the TAO open source platform, part of our social responsibility is our dedication to supporting education for the greater good. 

Through this, we aim to provide the most secure and reliable assessment tools and services through openness and collaboration, with a mission to advance online assessment with solutions that empower educators to transform today’s learners and tomorrow’s leaders.

We are also proud supporters of the IMS Standards First Pledge. As part of a community that is committed to making open standards the first and primary choice for education technology integrations, we are advocates for standards-based integrations.

We believe that achieving and promoting official product certification to open standards enables a better EdTech ecosystem and community and believe in fair and open business practices for suppliers.  Find out more about Standards First.

In schools and districts, open source software is gaining momentum as it fuels innovation in education and allows flexibility to the institutions that adopt it. Rather than being limited by the features offered in a proprietary solution licensed from a traditional vendor, a truly open source offering allows the user to freely access and modify the source code to create the system they really need; a solution that works well with other Ed tech solutions in the existing ecosystem. 

While open source software is free of licensing fees, there are associated costs including the technical expertise to implement and configure it, as well as deploy and support it. For many agencies, having this level of control along with the ability to change and add to their digital infrastructure as needed brings a huge benefit, especially when they tap the services offered by the developers of the open source system. 

Institutions across the world are working toward a common goal: improving assessment for the greater good of education.

As the teaching and learning landscape continuously evolves, inevitably so will the requirements of your assessment solution. 

Leveraging TAO for your online assessment needs gives you unfettered access to a global community of TAO users, with whom you can network, collaborate and share resources.

Because TAO is the preferred testing solution of the Flip+ eAssessment community, becoming a TAO user also provides opportunities to share the burden of contributing new innovations to the platform with other countries that are digitizing assessment. Ultimately, any new contributions are made available across all versions of TAO. In this way, your overall cost of technology ownership is significantly less than it would be with a proprietary vendor. 

If you're not already a member, we welcome you to join the TAO community today! Simply download our open source solution to get started.

You can easily get started using TAO for free today! Developers are able to access and download the TAO source code directly from Github. Or, if you are looking for a classroom-ready installation, educators can download and run TAO right through their browser. (instructions can be found here).

REGISTER FOR TAO DAYS
 

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

June 25th - 26th
1:00 - 4:30 (CET) 

1:00 - 1:15 | Opening Remarks
Marc Oswald, Patrick Plichart, Open Assessment Technologies

1:15 - 2:15| Keynote Presentation
Prof. Samuel Greiff, Head of Research Group, Principal Investigator, and Full Professor of Educational Psychology & Artificial Intelligence
| Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany

An authority in the fields of educational psychology, assessment, EdTech, AI, and big data, Dr. Greiff brings unparalleled expertise and insight through his extensive research. Prof. Greiff has secured significant research funding, published over 250 peer-reviewed articles, and contributed to numerous international conferences. He plays a crucial role in large-scale assessments like PISA and PIAAC, focusing on transversal skills, problem solving, and the application of AI in education.

Dr. Greiff's work has shaped our understanding of transversal skills and the application of AI in education, promising an insightful and inspiring keynote address.

2:15 - 2:45 | Bias Testing of Large Language Models
Dr. Renzo Degiovanni | Senior Research & Technology Associate| Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST)

Large Language Models (LLMs) are Artificial Intelligence (AI) models trained on big corpus of data that can generate human-like text. LLMs have recently gained a great popularity and adoption due to the public release of OpenAI’s Chat-GPT and Google's Bard. While these models might be revolutionary in many aspects, they may show undesired and potentially harmful outcomes that can affect not only the companies' prestige, but also the society in general. 

In this talk, Dr. Renzo Degiiovanni will present a leaderboard designed by LIST for assessing LLMs' ethical biases, which can lead to unfair and discriminatory outcomes.

2:45 - 3:15 | The TAO platform and Multilingualism: From Roller Coaster to Smooth Sailing?
Presented by cApStAn Linguistic Quality Control
Laura Casanellas Luri | CTO
Steve Dept | Founding Partner
Manuel Souto Pico | Lead Translation Technologist

Dive into the innovative collaboration that enabled interoperability between the open-source TAO test delivery platform and the open-source OmegaT computer-assisted translation tool (CAT tool) in order to support the 2025 PISA international assessment program. Hear from cApStAn's leadership team as they discuss the challenges encountered and the evolution of the translation middleware.

The second part of the presentation will examine the integration of machine translation (MT) engines within the platform, detailing the development of automated workflows. Additionally, we will discuss the computation and application of Artificial Intelligence Quality Estimates (AIQE) for assessing raw machine output. This session is ideal for those interested in the intersection of educational technology, translation, and artificial intelligence.

3:15 - 4:00 | Fireside Chat: Assessment Innovation with the New York City Department of Education 
Dr. Anthony Benners | Senior Psychometrician and Innovation Advisor | NYC Department of Education
Facilitated by: André Nunes | Product Marketing Manager | Open Assessment Technologies

Join us for an insightful interview with Dr. G. Anthony Benners where we'll discuss the application of assessment software by the New York City Department of Education for World Language Exams, focusing on the program's goals, student cohort, challenges, and future steps. During this live podcast-style session, we'll talk through the NYCDOE's experience transitioning from paper to digital assessments and share first-hand recommendations.

This presentation also delves into the use of AI in generating assessment questions from a psychometrician's perspective, addressing both summative and formative contexts. The session will conclude with a brief demo of the AI tool in TAO, inviting attendees to explore TAO's innovative features.

4:00 - 4:15 | Closing Remarks
Open Assessment Technologies

1:00: 1:50 | Keynote: Navigating the Future - Innovations on the Horizon with TAO
Dragos Ivan | Product Manager | Open Assessment Technologies

Join us as we spotlight the evolution of the TAO platform over the past year and unveil the upcoming innovations we have planned for our product roadmap. In this session, we'll dive into new experience TAO has to offer, beta features including AI assisted test development, offline test delivery, customizable reporting and more. 

1:50: 2:20 | Improving Literacy and Numeracy Outcomes for Learners in South Africa
Dr. Maxine Schaefer| Senior Researcher | Click Learning

The recently released Progress in International Reading Study (PIRLS) finds that 81% of grade 4 learners in South Africa cannot read for meaning. This outcome is disproportionately stacked against learners in poorer communities. In this session, Click Learning will share its approach of using edtech to improve literacy and numeracy outcomes for under-served learners in South Africa, and how it has leveraged TAO to deliver accessible, real-time, digital assessments at scale.

2:20 - 2:50 | Hands-on Tech Tips for Becoming a TAO Power User
Christophe Noel | Lead Business Analyst | Open Assessment Technologies

Want to learn to how to become a TAO power user? This 30-minute power-user session packs in best practices and pro-tips for using the latest edition of the TAO platform. Get hands-on with TAO and follow along with our product experts as they walk through scenarios using various features and tools.

2:50 3:30| Mitigating Technical Challenges: Building an Offline Assessment Delivery Solution
Sergei Mikhailov | Engineering Manager | Open Assessment Technologies


In the era of digital assessments, ensuring consistent and reliable access to testing environments is crucial, especially for global programs like the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This presentation explores the development of an offline assessment delivery solution tailored to the unique needs of PISA, addressing the technical challenges associated with delivering assessments in diverse and sometimes connectivity-limited environments.

Through this presentation, attendees will gain insights into the challenges faced during the development process, the solutions implemented to overcome these hurdles, and the broader implications for future assessment delivery in varying technological landscapes.

3:30 - 4:00 | Campaign Dress Rehearsal: A Practical Approach to Preparing a High-Stakes Assessment Launch
Gheorghe Dobrogeanu | Program Manager | Open Assessment Technologies

Launching a high-stakes, large-scale assessment campaign requires meticulous planning, thorough preparation, and the ability to handle unexpected challenges. This session addresses some common challenges faced during the preparation phase, including logistical issues, technological hurdles, and coordination among various stakeholders. Attendees will learn what to be aware of to ensure a smooth assessment launch, from potential pitfalls to critical checkpoints that must not be overlooked.

4:00 - 4:20 | Navigating Success: Insights from International Large-Scale High-Stakes Testing Campaigns Hans-Otto Sterling | Director of Global Assessment Solutions | Open Assessment Technologies

This session will provide an overview of selected international assessment campaigns, delving into the key insights gleaned from these large-scale testing initiatives. We will explore the technological advancements and the role of Artificial Intelligence, particularly Generative AI (GAI), in enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of these campaigns. Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of how cutting-edge technology and data-driven strategies can drive success in high-stakes testing environments.

4:00 - 4:15 | Closing Remarks
 

THANK YOU TO OUR PARTNERS

 

logo-capstan
NYC_DOE_Logo
440px-Logo-Goethe-University-Frankfurt-am-Main.svg
LIST_2016_rgb_H200px
Uchida_Yoko_logo
click-logo

Get Started with TAO Core Today

Driving our mission to provide access to reliable, transformative online testing tools, the open source community is at the heart of TAO. We’re thrilled to share that TAO Core 3.6 is now available and brings several new exciting features, including the upgrade to PHP 8.1 and our open source integration with our award winning manual scoring engine, TAO Grader.

Download TAO Core at no cost to start building better assessments, and deliver the testing experience students and educators deserve. 

 

Download Now

 

 

© 2024 by Open Assessment Technologies