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General COMPASS Background InformationThe Computer-adaptive Placement Assessment and Support System (COMPASS) test is specifically designed by ACT Inc. for placement purposes. In addition to being adaptive, unlike the SAT and ACT, students are given unlimited time to complete the computer delivered material. Much like the ACT in relation to subject matter, in the area of language arts they offer a reading test, as well as a “Writing Skills”, and “Writing Essay” test. However, there are also tests specially formulated for ESL students (“Things,” COMPASS Guide 1). “Computer-adaptive” means that the difficulty of test questions is determined by the student’s performance. How many institutions use COMPASS tests for placement into first year writing courses? As of 2008, more than 1000 institutions (COMPASS Guide 1). What is the COMPASS Reading Placement Test like? The test uses roughly 240-word passages rated to be approximately the equivalent to what a student is likely to encounter in the first year of college. Passages come from “Prose Fiction,” “Humanities passages, [which] describe or analyze ideas or works of art and craft,” “Social Sciences passages, [which] present information gathered by research,” “Natural Sciences passages, [which] present a science topic along with an explanation of its significance,” and “Practical Reading passages, [which] present information relevant to vocational or technical courses”. Passages are followed by multiple choice questions that ask students to either refer back to the text directly to locate the needed information, or to make inferences based on the material provided(COMPASS Guide 5). What is the COMPASS Writing Skills Placement Test like? It tests many of the the same areas as the ACT Writing Skills Test, including punctuation, basic grammar and usage, and sentence structure. Fewer rhetorical concerns related to organization, style, and strategy (to use ACT Incorporated’s terminology) are covered, however. The only concerns covered that are categorized as rhetorical are punctuation related, including “misplaced, omitted, or superfluous commas; colons; semicolons; dashes; parentheses; apostrophes; question marks; periods; and exclamation points” (COMPASS Guide 2). What is the COMPASS e-write test like? Much like the ACT Writing Test, students are presented with a prompt describing an issue typically relevant to native students beginning college, and asks them to persuasively explain their perspective. Unlike the ACT Writing test, students are asked to respond to a “problem/solution” task, rather than an “opinion on an issue” one. In addition, ACT prompts were designed and tested with high school juniors, and COMPASS prompts were created for beginning college students (Answers 2). It should also be noted that, while ACT prompts, as well as regular COMPASS e-writing prompts, strive to be contextually relevant to native, recent high school graduates, ESL prompts are “framed within a much more global or universal context” (Answers 3). What do Prompts look like? A sample prompt can be found here. How is the COMPASS e-write essay section scored? Essays are holistically scored by Vantage Learning’s IntelliMetric automated scoring engine on a scale of 2–8 (Answers 23). Rather than receiving a numerical score, if an essay does not respond to the provided prompt, it is given an “unscorable” code. In addition to this overall score, essays are given sub-scores on “Focus, Content, Organization, Style, and Conventions”. These sub-scores are independently assigned, and are not used to derive the overall score, however (COMPASS Guide 4). More information on automatic scoring can be found here. How much does it cost? Because the tests are administered by post secondary schools, costs vary by institution. For example, it costs $10 per test at Boise State University; At Houston Community College, there is a one time $25 testing fee; and at Dakota State University, there is no fee if the testing is required, but a $15 fee if a test is being taken to challenge placement (“Advising,” “COMPASS,” “Office”). Bibliography “Advising and Academic Enhancement.” Boise State University. N.p. N.d. Web. 1 May 2011. “COMPASS: Description and Cost.” Houston Community College. HCC. 2010. Web. 1 May 2011. “Things to Know About COMPASS.” ACT. ACT Inc. 2011. Web. 1 May 2011. (All information current as of May 2011) |