Conference Report: International Association for Computerized Adaptive Testing Conference 2022


The 8th IACAT conference was hosted by Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. It was an excellent experience to see how people from 29 countries conducted research on CAT and shared their findings at the conference. It is not an exaggeration to state that the 2022 IACAT conference was the best I have ever attended. And it was an honour to participate and present my paper at this conference.

On the first day of the conference, there was a pre-conference workshop. I joined one of the workshops about “Developing Online Adaptive Tests Using Open-Source Concerto Platform”. I learnt a lot, and it’s beneficial for my own study. In the afternoon, after the pre-conference workshop, the conference officially started. Three big names opened the conference: Prof. Dr. Sonja Rohrmann (Dean of the Faculty of Psychology), Dr. Alina A. von Davier (IACAT president), and Dr. Andreas Frey (conference chair). After the opening, there was a keynote speech from Dr. Anthony Zara from Pearson VUE, the new IACAT president. The session continued with a parallel paper presentation. At the end of the first day, there was a welcome dinner where all participants met and talked to each other. It was a good opportunity to interact with many big names of researchers and practitioners in the CAT field.

The second day was the same as the first, with more paper presentations. I really enjoyed the paper presentations because I got much insight into my study from the presenters. There were two keynote lectures on the second day from Wim J. van der Linden (the developer of the Math Garden test) and Ying Cheng (Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, USA).

The third day was the best part of this conference because I had my presentation. I presented my paper entitled “The Effect of Computerized Adaptive Testing on Motivation and Anxiety: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis”. I did not expect that there would be many audiences in my session. The room was full of people. Our theme was “test-taking experience”, slightly different from the other “technical” papers. The best part of this presentation was that the chair of our session was the author who inspired me a lot (Dr. Steven Wise). I cited many of his papers in my works. And after my presentation, I got a lot of positive feedback as well as new connections.

Overall, I am grateful for such an opportunity to attend the conference. This year’s IACAT conference showcased various perspectives concerning psychological testing and related research methodology. The pre-conference workshop, keynote lectures, and paper presentations at this conference greatly helped my thesis. In addition, I find a lot of new colleagues, and it is possible for us to collaborate in the future.