Open source testing

Education is extremely well suited to open source methodology. There are already a number of successful open source curriculum projects, including:

1. MIT OpenCourseWare
2. Connexions
3. Open Content Curriculum Project
4. OpenEducator
5. Open Source Learning Project

Using the same methodology for testing would involve setting up a repository of exam questions for a subject. If the exam should consist of, say, a hundred questions, the repository might consist of a thousand or more questions. Every student would then receive a random collection of those questions; given the number of possible tests, it's unlikely that any two students would receive exactly the same exam paper.

The process of deciding which subjects should be offered would be left to open source methodology as well. Each subject would require a governing board of at least three universities. Any accredited university would be allowed to join this governing board. In addition, any private company, charity or individual could join the governing board with the consent of the universities on the board. If ever a subject no longer had at least three universities on its governing board, it would cease to be offered as a standardised test.

No governing board would have a monopoly on a subject. If a group of at least three universities wished to form a competing governing board, offering a test in the same subject, they would be free to do so.

These questions could be contributed and edited by anyone, regardless of qualifications. However, these contributions and edits would not be applied to the visible repository until approved by a volunteer editor. Volunteer editors would be appointed by the governing board, generally from the faculty of member universities, but also including anyone from the general public that the board found acceptable. In traditional open source terms, contributors submit patches, but only editors have commit access to the repository.