About Us
Open Assessment Technologies is a community driving a global movement of people using assessments as a force for good. The values and aspirations of our team are embedded in what we do.
Explore Careers Contact UsRaising standards. Promoting confidence.
At Open Assessment Technologies, we come to work every day because we’re serious about the possibilities of digital transformation in the assessment world.
Today’s eLearning landscape is continuously evolving. Everyone is guessing when it comes to technology—but not us. Our TAO platform is the only digital assessment solution built on open standards for a reason: to evolve with the needs of today’s learners.
We are dedicated to providing the most secure and reliable assessment tools and services through openness and collaboration, with a mission to advance online assessment to empower today’s learners and tomorrow’s leaders.
Our History
TAO (Test Assisté par Ordinateur) started in late 2002 as a joint project between the Henri Tudor Research Center – now called the Luxembourg Institute for Science and Technology (LIST) and the University of Luxembourg.
The team developed a highly flexible and customizable computer-based assessment (CBA) platform that would be 100% web-based and freely available to the education community worldwide. The final result was the TAO platform, with its first prototype released in 2004.
In 2013, following years of international adoption of the TAO platform, LIST partnered with Cito International to form Open Assessment Technologies (OAT). Powered by the OAT Open Source philosophy and driven with commitment to the common good in education, TAO has evolved into the leading open source assessment solution for education and employment, with users in 194 countries and 30 languages. To date, TAO has delivered over 30 million tests worldwide.
2002
Initial concept for TAO is developed.
LIST (The Luxembourg Institute for Science and Technology) & The University of Luxembourg develop the concept for flexible computer-based adaptive testing based on web technologies, later to be known as TAO (Test Assisté par Orinateur) .
2004
First prototype of TAO is released.
LIST (The Luxembourg Institute for Science and Technology) releases the first prototype of TAO.
2005
TAO enters a strategic partnership with DIPF, the Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education
2007
PISA selects TAO.
TAO is used for the first Electronic Reading Assessment option delivered on computers for OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2009 survey across 20 countries (consortium led by ACER).
2008
OECD selects TAO to conduct its 2012 PIAAC (The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) study of adult skills across 20+ countries in 30+ languages (consortium led by ETS).
TAO is granted strategic funding for DIPF for the refactoring of TAO core architecture.
2009
First public release of TAO 1.0 under GPL 2 License.
OECD selects TAO to conduct its 2012 PISA study across 60+ countries in 80+ languages (cosortium led by ACER).
2011
The University of Szeged (Hungry) and Karolinska Institute (Stockholm, Sweden) contribute to TAO's Open Source.
OECD selects TAO as its strategic platform to conduct the PISA 2015 study across 70+ countries (consortium led by ETS)
2012
OECD Selects TAO to expand its PIAAC study to 10 countries (consortium led by ETS)
2013
Open Assessment Technologies S.A. was created in 2013, becoming the new home of TAO
Cito and LIST invest in OAT, enabling the team to accelerate product development and offer commercial services worldwide.
The Swiss EDK selects TAO for monitoring student progress throughout the country.
NCSE selects TAO to assess students with learning disabilities across 24 partner and affiliated states for K12 schools in the U.S.
2014
OECD continues to build on TAO for its next round of PISA testing, to be conducted in 2015.
2015
ACT announces TAO as their preferred supplier for digital assessment.
Marc Oswald, Co-Found & CEO, is named the chairman of EBA
2016
Mark Molenaar joins OAT as CTO and is named the new Chairman of EBA.
2019
Open Assessment Technologies Inc. opens their Boston, Massachusetts office.
2020
TAO reaches 100 million test deliveries and counting world-wide.
Open Assessment Technologies Inc. opens the Madrid office in Spain.
2021
TAO unveils a new platform user interface for enhanced accessibility.
We are true to others, and commit to sharing resources in the open source community.
By leveraging experts in the open source community, we can create and share resources and gain earlier access to innovative solutions.
TAO: Accelerating Innovation in Education
At Open Assessment Technologies, we are committed to organizations who want the freedom to control and own their assessment experience – from item creation to delivery and reporting, the TAO assessment platform delivers maximum flexibility, interoperability, and security. TAO is the only platform built on open standards for a reason: so we can be future-forward and collaborative, evolving as today’s learners do.
Because ultimately, we believe in accelerating innovation in education.
