Site offers new twist on test preparation
Students learn by examining mistakes
Studying for the US citizenship exam taught software engineer Raju Gupta how tough standardized tests can be. It also gave him the idea for Socrato.com, his new Internet-based test preparation business.
Now Gupta's company, OmniSharp Inc. of North Andover, hopes to launch Socrato by offering free help to Massachusetts students trying to pass the state's MCAS achievement exam.
"We believe that we will be able to help students and teachers save time, spend less time on test preparation, and still score higher on the test," said Gupta, a 10-year veteran of Sapient Corp., a technology consulting firm in Cambridge.
Socrato is currently being used on a trial basis by about 1,000 people. Along with MCAS help, Socrato offers assistance with English vocabulary and US citizenship tests. The site uses software to analyze the students' answers, and spot areas where they need extra help. For instance, Socrato asks students how they decided on the answers to questions. This helps reveal whether the student is using the right method to find an answer. The site also tracks how much time students spend on a question, and how many times they change their answers. This reveals whether test takers are confident about their knowledge.
Elspeth Benard, who oversees the Classroom at the Workplace program at the Boston Private Industry Council, said her group plans to use Socrato for remedial training of high school students this summer. "Most of these students, by the time they reach us, they've failed the MCAS three times," Benard said. "We know they are failing . . . but we don't actually know why." Benard hopes that Socrato's tools will pinpoint students' weakest areas and lead to more efficient use of classroom time. "We see a lot of potential for that," she said.
But Heidi Guarino, chief of staff for the Massachusetts Department of Education, said that no amount of Internet training can substitute for competent classroom instruction. "Online test prep . . . as the only way to prepare for MCAS is not the way to go," Guarino said. "The best preparation for MCAS is a good curriculum in school." Still Guarino said that Socrato is "kind of a cool site," and that her agency is not opposed to online test preparation.
Gupta came up with the idea for Socrato in 2005. At the time, his niece was studying for her college entrance exams, and Gupta himself was practicing for his US citizenship test. "I realized there were about 20 questions that I did wrong, and about 10 questions that I did over and over again wrong," said Gupta. He also realized that his niece was having even more problems with the much longer Scholastic Aptitude Test.
Rather than go over all the material covered by the tests, Gupta wanted a method that would home in on his niece's problem areas, and his own. So he wrote software to do the job. "When I created a prototype and showed people, they said, this is very cool." So Gupta and former Sapient colleague Michael Oates founded OmniSharp to turn the concept into a business.
Gupta isn't sure how to make his idea pay. Ideally, he said, Socrato would always be free for students. "Subscription is certainly a possibility, but we're trying to stay away from that if we can," he said. One possibility: sponsorship by colleges and universities, which could use the service as a recruiting tool. "We are finding that there is a lot of interest out there," Gupta said.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.
