For me, standardized testing always seemed a cruel and impersonal judgment of knowledge: Students fill in bubbles with a No. 2 pencil and get a numeric score from a heartless robot.
Such a system leaves no opportunity to learn from your mistakes. Boston-based Socrato changes all that by offering online standardized tests with analyzed results displayed in graphs that help students (and parents) learn exactly where they can improve.
- Socrato’s History and Goals
Socrato is a new software-based service that allows standardized test-takers to take practice tests online — including SATs, ACTs, MCAS and U.S. Citizenship at present — and receive detailed analysis of their answers aimed at revealing weaknesses, identifying strengths, and pinpointing areas in need of improvement.
Founder Raju Gupta has worked with data analytics for Bank of America and Fidelity, where he “got to see a lot of complex technology.” One day in 2006, he was helping his niece prepare for the SATs, and as she filled out her bubble sheet, he began to wonder,”Can you harvest knowledge from this?”
He found that bubble sheets have much more to share than simple test scores.
Gupta started working on Socrato in 2007, and the product was launched in mid 2008. With Socrato analyses, Raju explains, test information is analyzed from “hundreds of angles.” The data in web-based bubble sheets can be interpreted to create anything from simple graphs of performance by section, to breakdowns of point costs so that students can determine where to concentrate their study efforts when preparation time is in short supply.
Raju’s main goal for Socrato is to “help students and teachers better understand student needs.” For this reason, Socrato is being distributed to tutoring centers and schools, granting teachers and tutors specific knowledge about each student for better one-on-one preparation.
- Rethinking the Robot’s Role
Having seen a couple example graphs and breakdowns, it appears there is so much information correlated that it may be difficult for the average person interpret. Gupta assures me that Socrato’s technology currently has the power to break correlations down into simple study suggestions, but he believes that this is the role of the human teacher. Socrato is meant help professors and tutors, not replace them.
You might think of Socrato as the Google Analytics of education, and just as Google doesn’t tell you how to manage your website, Socrato doesn’t tell you how to teach your students. Thus, maintaining a human connection during education is still a vital part of the test prep process.
Also included in Socrato’s technology is the ability to create practice exams and share them with others, so Socrato isn’t ignoring the human element inherent in crowd sourcing either.
- Demystifying Preparation
Above all else, Socrato has the potential to strip standardized tests of their mysterious, intimidating power, and turn them into more helpful learning tools. It also helps students glean more from each practice test they take. These are services I know I would have appreciated while stressing about the SATs.
Think Socrato has potential? Notice any flaws? Let us know what you think in the comments section.
