Three Applications of Automated Test Assembly within a User-Friendly Modeling Environment

While linear programming is a common tool in business and industry, there have not been many applications in educational assessment and only a handful of individuals have been actively involved in conducting psychometric research in this area. Perhaps this is due, at least in part, to the complexity of existing software packages. This article presents three applications of linear programming to automate test assembly using an add-in to Microsoft Excel 2007. These increasingly complex examples permit the reader to readily see and manipulate the programming objectives and constraints within a familiar modeling environment. A spreadsheet used in this demonstration is available for downloading.