Honeycomb structure for automated pool assembly of test questions for test administration

An automated system for assembling computerized adaptive test (CAT) pools of test items, the system comprising:

• (a) a storage device configured to store a plurality of item bins, each item bin being associated with a different content domain and including a plurality of test items associated with its respective content domain;
• (b) a processor configured to group the test items in each item bin into a plurality of individual cells, wherein each item is placed in only one of the individual cells, and each cell includes a plurality of test items which span a range of difficulty levels, and wherein the grouping is performed by linear programming at the individual cell level,
• the processor further configured to assemble a plurality of pools of test items, each pool of test items being assembled from a random selection of cells across the item bins, wherein there is only one cell for each item bin;
• and
• (c) a CAT engine configured to randomly assign each test taker to one of the plurality of pools of test items,
• wherein a CAT is administered to the test takers using their randomly assigned respective pool of test items, and
• wherein all of the test items in the administered CAT to be potentially presented to each test taker is in the one pool of test items that is randomly assigned to the respective test taker.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions which, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to:

• (a) create a plurality of item bins, each item bin being associated with a different content domain, each item bin including only test items associated with its respective content domain;
• (b) group the test items in each item bin into a plurality of individual cells, wherein each item is placed in only one of the individual cells, and each cell includes a plurality of test items which span a range of difficulty levels,
• wherein the grouping is performed by linear programming at the individual cell level;
• (c) assemble a plurality of pools of test items, each pool of test items being assembled from a random selection of cells across the item bins, wherein there is only one cell for each item bin;
• (d) randomly assign each test taker to one of the plurality of pools of test items;
• and
• (e) administer a CAT to the test takers using their randomly assigned respective pool of test items
• wherein all of the test items in the administered CAT to be potentially presented to each test taker is in the one pool of test items that is randomly assigned to the respective test taker.