INTRODUCTION TO OPEN SOURCE

SOFTWARE
TAO Days 2013
Bern, Switzerland

INTRODUCTIONS
Doug Wilson is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of
Breakthrough Technologies and has over 24 years of product
development experience, with over 15 years of experience
developing assessment and associaDon soluDons. His clients have
included Pearson VUE, NBCRNA, NABP, AAAHC, AbboN and
Lockheed MarDn. Doug has served in a wide variety of posiDons
including development lead, engagement manager, and
enterprise architect. He has been responsible for the technology
strategy and new product development for a wide variety of
content management and delivery iniDaDves. Doug has been
architecDng soluDons using open source for over 12 years and
more recently acted as soluDons architect for the NCSC mulDstate
consorDum, part of the U.S.s $4B Race-To-The-Top IniDaDve.

AGENDA
Breakthrough Background
Our master plan
Overview of assessment markets
Where do we go from here?

WHY AM I HERE?
Breakthrough Technologies joined TAO as
the first launch partner for the U.S. and
Canada
We were first introduced to TAO in 2012 at
ATP in the U.S.
Our firm is passionate about testing and
open source

WHAT IS OUR MISSION?

Enable innovative software solutions, primarily

built on the back of amazing open source
solutions

Assessment
and
EducaDon

AssociaDons
and
Nonprots

Enterprise Mobility
and Product
Development

OUR OPEN SOURCE TOOLS

Custom Development - LAMP

Assessment - TAO

Web content management Drupal

Enterprise Content Management Alfresco

Enterprise Reporting & Business Intelligence JasperReports

A LITTLE ABOUT US

30 full time development staff

Based in Chicago, IL in the Northwestern

University campus

Eat, sleep and breathe software

development

Agile shop

Deep connections and trusted advisor

position in a variety of US industries

DRUPALCON!

SOME OF OUR CLIENTS

BREAKTHROUGHS TAO SERVICES

Tao + Higher Stakes Assessment Edition

Hosted instance on the Breakthrough Cloud
SLA for questions, issues and uptime
Training for staff and tech support
Needs Assessment
Business Rules Integration
Customization services
Workflow
Publishing
Item Types

Migration services

Our Master Plan

BREAKTHROUGH TECHNOLOGIES MASTER

PLAN TO RULE THE ASSESSMENT WORLD
1.

Identify a great open source technology platform and

partner with its parent organization

2.

Aggressively sell the platform and customization, hosting,

and training services to clients and prove that high quality,
robust assessment platforms do not cost an arm and a leg.

3.

Further develop the platform to fill gaps in features across

the three assessment markets in US and Canada

U.S. AND CANADIAN ASSESSMENT

MARKETS
K-12
Higher Ed
Adult Licensure
and Certification

Low Stakes
FormaDve
or pracDce
exams

Mid
stakes

Interim

assessments

High stakes

SummaDve
Assessments

SWEET SPOT FOR MARKET ENTRY

K-12
High stakes

SummaDve
Assessments

Adult Licensure
and Certification
Based on investments in educational reform
And opportunities for lower cost professional
assessment tools.

ADDITIONALLY
Higher stakes assessment market ripe for disruption
Established players
Older technology (some over 12 years old)
Organizations are over $1B in annual sales
Higher Ed markets are more agile, diverse, and already
have some well established open source LMS solutions,
some of which include assessment technology,
distributed scoring, etc.
Higher stakes means that there is a business model
behind the assessment and they are willing to invest
and be more creative in its implementation

WHAT ARE THE

GAPS WITHIN
EACH MARKET?

HIGHER STAKES FUNCTIONAL GAPS

Simple but powerful workflow
Standard item and test reports
K-12
Integrate queries Mid
into test
Low Stakes
stakes
construction
FormaDve
Higher Ed

or pracDce
Interim
exams
Test analysis
Forms
Adult Licensure
Test sections, with nonlinear
and Certification
delivery
Nontrivial test driver

High stakes

SummaDve
Assessments

assessments

K12 FUNCTIONAL GAPS

K-12

Low Stakes
FormaDve
or pracDce
exams

Higher Ed
Passages!
MathML rendering
Adult Licensure
Standards
allignment
andtest
Certification
K12
driver tools
Score reports
Adaptive items, feedback,
and formative supports

Mid
stakes

Interim

assessments

High stakes

SummaDve
Assessments

ADULT LICENSURE AND CERTIFICATION

FUNCTIONAL GAPS

Passages / Cases
K-12
Item/Distractor/Test statistics
Mid
Item relationships (enemy)
Low Stakes
stakes
FormaDve
Higher
Ed

or pracDce
Multiple standards allignment
Interim
exams
Score reports
Adult Licensure
Test
Taker Attestations
and Certification
Item assignments and
workflow / folder permissions

assessments

High stakes

SummaDve
Assessments

HOW DO WE
MOVE
FORWARD?

HOW WE CAN CLOSE THESE GAPS

TOGETHER
1.

Bring sales opportunities back to OAT and allow them to see the
barriers to implementation;

2.

Build out custom features for clients, and push them to contribute
those features back to the community;

3.

Include those contributed modules either in the Breakthrough

distributions or offer them back to the core platform;

4.

Continue to extend our market-specific implementations and

continue to advocate and contribute code for the core platform.

QUESTIONS?
Please feel free to contact me!
Doug Wilson - doug.wilson@breaktech.com or
(847) 864-0033 x201
@SocialMiscreant
Skype: doug.wilson2009

Thank you!