ATP Honors its 2023 Award Winners

ATP honored its three 2023 Award Winners at the opening session of the Innovations Conference held March  12- 15, in Dallas, Texas. This year's winners included Ada Woo, VP of Innovative Learning Sciences, Ascend Learning, (pictured left with 2023 Conference Chair Ashok Sarathy of GMAC, and 2023 Innovations Conference Chair, Isabelle Gothier of PSI.) Dr. Woo received the ATP Award for Professional Contributions and Service to testing.

This year's winner of the Career Achievement Award was John Kleeman, EVP, Learnosity and Questionmark and a past-Chair of the ATP Board of Directors. And the recipient of ATP's newest award, The Rising Leader Award, was given for the first time this year, to Joanna Solomon, Manager Psychometrics, Multi-Health Systems.

More about Ada Woo: Ada Woo has two decades of experience in assessment development and innovation. As Vice President of Innovative Learning Sciences at Ascend Learning, she oversees all research and development aspects of learning and assessment products. By ensuring that the best of measurement and learning sciences is integrated into Ascend’s offerings, Woo and her team help customers achieve their workforce education goals. Prior to Ascend, Woo worked in the K-12 edtech sector and on multiple healthcare testing programs. Woo has volunteered extensively for ATP. As Chair of the 2021 Innovations in Testing Conference, she led the first virtual Innovations. She has also led the Certification and Licensure Division, the Workforce Skill Credentialing Division, the Health SIG, and served on the Edtech and Computational Psychometric Summit program committee.  Woo is active in the edtech and psychometrics communities. She had co-chaired the NCME Mission Fund Committee, overseeing a grant program that supports diversity, equity and inclusion research. Locally, Woo is an appointee to the Iowa Innovation Council, a government advisory body that supports public-private partnerships to boost innovation and economic development state-wide. Woo holds a Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology. Her research interests include personalized learning, adaptive testing, and automation of assessment processes. She frequently presents and publishes on these topics at national and international forums.

More about John Kleeman: John Kleeman is Founder of Questionmark and now works in the executive team at Learnosity and Questionmark. He wrote the first version of the Questionmark software and founded the Questionmark company in 1988 and over the years has worked in software development, product management, general management, security, and legal/privacy. Kleeman is now responsible for legal/privacy and industry relations at Questionmark and Learnosity, and regularly writes and presents on assessment good practice. He has been involved in many assessment standards initiatives and was on the original team that developed IMS QTI.  Kleeman was involved in the formation of Europe-ATP and India-ATP and serves as Chairperson of the ATP Board of Directors in 2021. His volunteer work for ATP has included helping revise the ISO 10667 standard, working on the ATP/ITC Guidelines for Technology-Based Assessment, and launching the ATP Learning Academy.  He is an active member of the ATP Privacy Subcommittee and of the ATP Test Content Infringement & Fraud Coalition.  Kleeman holds a first-class degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Trinity College, Cambridge.

More about Joanna Solomon: Joanna Solomon has been key to modernizing the psychometric work done at MHS where she is credited with decreasing reliance solely on classical test theory to embracing item response theory (IRT) in development work; and  she has worked to construct and refine the scoring that has now been used for several years to allow for the fair and equitable assessment of the receptive language skills of English learners. MHS CEO Hazel Wheldon remarked, "Joanna has a way of making psychometrics understandable. She spent the last year writing 'Psychometric Mail Bag' posts to all MHS staff. In these posts, she taught the company, in her often funny, and always accessible language, the basics of psychometrics, how we build our tests and that is, in turn, helping our clients. She started by educating everyone on what exactly psychometrics means, and then moved on to provide micro-lessons on topics included (but not limited to), how we write/select test items, norming, reliability, validity, and fairness.  The Psychometric Mail Bag is well-written and drives important conversations and engagement across MHS."

Wheldon added, "Joanna is an inspiring and innovative leader who embraces continuous learning and never backs down from a challenge. She is the first person to volunteer to figure out something new and a role model for individuals across the organization. Joanna jumped into ATP when offered the opportunity, quickly joined the I/O division and moved up to Chair the division. She has organized coffee chats and other events and has firmly established herself as a formidable team member. Joanna has presented several terrific sessions at the ATP conferences and attended virtually throughout the pandemic. Joanna is the next generation of leadership at MHS, and I believe she embodies the next generation of leaders within ATP."

[Visit ATP's Wall of Honor to view past award winners and to make a nomination for 2024.]