PAEA Next-Generation Exam Platform: About Our New Partners

This week, PAEA announced the upcoming launch of its next-generation exam platform, which will occur on August 2, 2022. Along with the new platform, we will welcome our new Assessment partners, BTL Surpass and Alpine Testing Solutions.

In 2020, the PAEA Assessment Team worked with a consulting firm to survey our members to help us better understand their needs regarding our assessment products. Members reported the need for remote proctoring solutions, lockdown browsers, and enhanced score reports. After receiving these member insights, we put out a national Request for Proposal or RFP in June 2021. The RFP outlined PAEA’s requirements for a vendor-partner to help us design and implement the features that our members prioritize in an exam platform, and to support PAEA in the development, management, delivery, and reporting of our exams including PACKRAT®, End of Rotation™ exams, and the End of Curriculum™ exam. Multiple vendors responded to our RFP, including some of the largest in the world.

After a rigorous selection process, we selected two new vendor-partners:

• BTL Surpass offered the best technical solution for exam development and delivery. A distinct strength of their solution is that they understand higher education and healthcare assessment. Their testing platform is intuitive and easy to navigate. BTL Surpass actively reinvest profits back into the continued enhancement of their product with the sole purpose of providing the most modern and feature-rich solution. We believe the BTL Surpass partnership will transform the PAEA Assessment experience for item writers, PA program faculty, and students.

• Alpine Testing Solutions is an employee-owned, long-tenured industry provider of exam development services, and a sponsored member of the American Board of Medical Specialties. Twenty percent of their clients are in the healthcare space. Alpine will provide dedicated exam development staff and psychometricians who will help us to ensure the validity of PAEA assessments. Their practices for training, analysis, and process-building are top notch.

We are thrilled to share that, going forward, PAEA Assessment services will integrate with the PAEA Member Community for ease of use and secure login processes. Program users will access their assessment accounts through a single-sign-on experience from the PAEA homepage. This solution offers greater efficiency, improved data synchronization, and unifies member profiles.

“As we began our vendor search, we knew it was imperative to choose partners who align with PAEA Assessment’s values of delivering quality, advancing learning, and facilitating success,” said PAEA’s Chief Assessment Officer, Olivia Ziegler. “At PAEA, we believe our work goes beyond offering formative and summative exam tools. We are helping programs educate the next generation of PAs and, in turn, helping those future providers prepare for the responsibility that lies ahead. With this responsibility at the forefront of our efforts, we conducted a rigorous review process to ensure that our new partners will work alongside us with passion, dedication, and excellence as we serve PA education by providing superior, validated exam products.”

While this new partnership will come with critical platform innovations, PAEA’s exams will not change. Our exams will continue to be developed by PA educators for PA students, as they always have been. Through the transition and beyond, PAEA will continue to provide superior exams that are validated and follow the rigorous development standards our members rely on.