Jim Wollack - Director
After receiving my Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1996, I began working as a Scientist in the UW Center for Placement Testing, before becoming Director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Testing and Evaluation Services (T&E) and the UW-System Center for Placement Testing in 2007. As Director, I oversee all aspects of T&E and the Center, set strategic directions, develop and monitor budgets, evaluate programming and personnel, maintain an active research program, and serve as a UW-Madison campus liaison for assessment issues. In 2009, I also joined the faculty of the Educational Psychology Department, serving as Professor in the Quantitative Methods program. I am also an elected member of the UW Teaching Academy.
My scholarly activities focus most squarely on issues in test security, item response theory, test development and college placement testing. My research in test security has introduced new approaches to detecting answer copying, test collusion, item preknowledge, and test tampering, and has also helped establish best practices for test administration, utilizing cheating detection indexes in operational settings, and implementing cheating prevention, detection, and mitigation strategies throughout a testing program. I have published numerous journal articles and am a frequent presenter at national and international conferences. I am a contributor to the 4th edition of Educational Measurement (2006), Fairness in Educational Assessment and Measurement (in press), and Testing in the Professions (in press). I am also co-editor of the Handbook of Test Security (2013, with J. Fremer) and the Handbook of Quantitative Methods for Detecting Cheating on Tests (in press, with G. Cizek).
I am very active in the professional community. I currently sit on the Governing Council for the National College Testing Association (NCTA) and the Executive Committee for the Conference on Test Security. I previously served on the Governing Board for the National Council on Measurement in Education and am a past-President of the Measurement Services Special Interest Group of the American Education Research Association (AERA). I am also the inaugural editor of the Journal of the National College Testing Association. I am a past recipient of the NCTA President’s Award (2014) and NCTA Service and Leadership Award (2015).
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Cizek, G. J., & Wollack, J. A. (in press). Exploring cheating on tests: The context, the concern, and the challenge. In G. J. Cizek & J. A. Wollack (Eds.) Handbook of Quantitative Methods for Detecting Cheating on Tests. New York, NY: Routledge.
Cizek, G. J., & Wollack, J. A. (Eds.) (in press). Handbook of Quantitative Methods for Detecting Cheating on Tests. New York, NY: Routledge.
Wollack, J. A., & Case, S. M. (in press). Maintaining fairness through test administration. In N. J. Dorans & L. Cook (Eds.) Fairness in Educational Assessment and Measurement.
Wollack, J. A. & Cizek, G. J. (in press). The future of quantitative methods for detecting cheating: Conclusions, cautions, and recommendations. In G. J. Cizek & J. A. Wollack (Eds.) Handbook of Quantitative Methods for Detecting Cheating on Tests. New York, NY: Routledge.
Wollack, J. A. & Eckerly, C. A. (in press). Detection of test tampering at the group level. In G. J. Cizek & J. A. Wollack (Eds.) Handbook of Quantitative Methods for Detecting Cheating on Tests. New York, NY: Routledge.
Wollack, J. A. & Maynes, D. M. (in press). Detection of test collusion using cluster analysis. In G. J. Cizek & J. A. Wollack (Eds.) Handbook of Quantitative Methods for Detecting Cheating on Tests. New York, NY: Routledge.
Wollack, J. A., Cohen, A. S., & Eckerly, C. A. (2015). Detecting test tampering using item response theory. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 75, 931-953.
Wollack, J. A. & Fremer, J. J. (Eds.) (2013). Handbook of Test Security, New York, NY: Routledge.
Bolt, D. M., Wollack, J. A. & Suh, Y. (2012). Application of a multidimensional nested logit model to multiple-choice test items. Psychometrika, 77, 339-357.
Suh, Y., Cho., S.-J., & Wollack, J. A. (2012). A comparison of item calibration procedures in the presence of test speededness. Journal of Educational Measurement, 49, 285-311.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Address:
Educational Sciences Bldg., Room 373
1025 W. Johnson Street
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: (608) 262-5863
Fax: (608) 263-4291
email: jwollack@wisc.edu