Dear Helen,
At the Language Centre of the Cyprus University of Technology we have been using SLUPE since the Spring of 2013. As you would be aware, SLUPE provides a platform for the creation of computer-adaptive tests, the content of which users have to create themselves.
While it is possible to use questions in the database created by colleagues elsewhere, the only way to really have a test adapted to your students is to create your own test items. The mechanics of this are very easy in SLUPE, it’s just a matter of writing
(or copying and pasting) in questions and multiple-choice responses. SLUPE supports multi-media question prompts (text, audio, video), which work well for vocabulary, grammar, and listening comprehension test items. Reading comprehension, however, is not well
supported because multiple questions cannot be asked of paragraph length passages. Placement results are returned on a semester basis: 1-4. These four levels, however, can correspond to whatever you want them to (e.g., CEFR: A1, A2, B1, B2, etc.). Needless
to say, the accuracy of student placements depends entirely upon the accuracy of the difficulty levels (1-4) that test designers assign to test questions. Unless you already have a question database the difficulty level of which has already been reliably
established, the first implementations of a SLUPE test of necessity can only be based upon your intuitions about question difficulty levels. From experience, I can say with some confidence that these will only be partially confirmed by subsequent statistical
analysis. In order to determine the difficulty level of test items with reasonable statistical validity, you need to trial the test with about 500 students. Inevitably, the statistical analysis of this will require you to adjust question difficulty levels
and create new items to fill in the blanks that are thus created (a minimal number of questions is required at each level). Once you have done this a couple of times, you should have a placement test that serves your particular needs quite well. Jack
Dr Jack Burston
Honorary Research Fellow
Language Centre
Cyprus University of Technology
(357) 2500 2708