Anchorage School District expands use of OWL Testing Software

April 8, 2011 - PRLog -- OWL Testing Software, a premier provider of affordable online testing and assessment systems, announced today that Anchorage School District is expanding their use of OWL. The Alaskan school district has installed OWL's online testing software to facilitate foreign language oral proficiency workshops in Spanish, German, French, Japanese, and Russian. The workshops are based on the popular Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview (SOPI) type of high stakes testing.

OWL Testing Software offers Anchorage School District an efficient alternative for administering oral proficiency assessments that, traditionally, have been delivered using test booklets and two tape recorders. Using OWL, the district can administer the entire assessment online through their computer network using a single piece of software. This includes capturing students' speaking samples digitally and allowing the district's world language raters to evaluate and provide feedback to those speaking samples online. OWL also captures the data necessary for performance reporting and has a module for communicating with students.

The large scope of Anchorage School District, both in terms of geographic size and student population, can  make the traditional manner of administering oral proficiency interviews difficult. OWL Testing Software offers a solution for delivering language workshops that leverages the district's existing computer network to manage, schedule, deliver and rate the students' foreign language capabilities at their existing locations. This alleviates the burden of bringing students together in a single location or language laboratory.

Chris Dalessandri, president and CEO of OWL Testing Software, explains, “Many of our customers use OWL for SOPI-like testing. OWL's long-standing customers have done validation studies over several years successfully correlating the tests delivered through OWL with those given by certified OPI raters.” Mr. Dalessandri continues, "With close to 50,000 students and a geographic size resembling the state of Maryland, Anchorage School District is a perfect example of how our software allows districts to leverage their existing technology investment to facilitate distance learning. Moreover, OWL empowers our clients by providing them with a way to build and expand their use of technology in every aspect of language teaching and learning.”

About OWL Testing Software
OWL Testing Software is a leading provider of online test building software to academia, business, and government. Built as a Web-based solution for test creation, administration, and management, OWL Testing Software is unique in its ability to create tests for all four communication skills – oral, aural, reading and writing. OWL is available as licensed software and as a hosted solution to meet the needs of organizations concerned with enhancing the learning and assessment process. For more information, please visit http://www.owlts.com or call (877) 695-3395.

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OWL Testing Software is a premier provider of affordable online testing and assessment systems for academia, government, and business users.