Getting on with eAssessment

I’ve been trying to put together a little blurb to advertise the RSCtv sessions I’m presenting on the 25th of March on Designing eAssessments – from elementary to higher order skills. It’s meant doing a bit of research which, although distracting me from my initial mission to find practical resources on writing online assessments (and I still haven’t written the blurb), has reminded me of the other organisational issues that need to be addressed before eAssessment can move into the mainstream. My colleague Celeste McLaughlin, eAdvisor for eAssessment and eResources, and I work closely supporting the HE and FE sectors’ eLearning efforts and eAssessment has been on the agenda at the RSC for a long time. It has been a bit of an uphill struggle to engage colleges with the notion of eAssessment and that’s maybe to do with the difficult organisational issues that really need to be addressed before summative eAssessments can be implemented.
My experience suggests that, at the moment, many organisations that do carry out summative eAssessments, use an externally hosted system provided by a specific awarding body, such as the British Computer Society for ECDL. I’m unsure if there’s a great deal of summative eAssessment going on for qualifications that are awarded from the SQA apart from pilot work and special projects. From one perspective, where often formative assessment is used as preparation for summative assessment, I can see the problem of spending time creating and using a formative eAssessment that bears no resemblance to the summative one. Time is precious and it’s important to prepare learners properly. eAssessment comes into its own though when regarded more as a learning tool to reinforce, motivate, self assess, give feedback and instil confidence.
In terms of organisation issues that require to be addressed there is a long list. Systems require to be secure, reliable and robust enough to meet the demand of simultaneous access by large numbers of students; mechanisms for personal identification need to be in place; the flexibility of learning spaces, which both facilitate interaction for learning but ensures screens are not overlooked for eAssessment purposes is a consideration; clear policies and procedures need to be in place to deal with for e.g. plagiarism and accessibility; a staff development programme to ensure the staff have an accurate knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of eAssessment will be needed.
Implementing summative eAssessment will require a larger degree of institutional support than formative or diagnostic eAssessment which can often be managed by individual lecturers or departments.

No Blog next week – I’m on leave – next posting on the 20th

Effective use of VLEs - InfoKit
Assessment is for Learning (LTScotland)
QCA (England) assessment for learning guidance notes