e-Assessment
e-Assessment is a critical issue for post-16, higher education (HE) and the wider education community; it is recognised within the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) as fundamental to its success and as an important factor in delivering the emerging programmes of learning for 14 to 19-year-olds.
JISC recognised the importance of e-assessment for the UK education and research community as long ago as the late 1990s as part of the ground breaking work on Managed Learning Environments and work on standards. JISC realises that it has an important role to play through its work in this area. As software suppliers and test developers become increasingly involved in producing e-assessment tools and content, so JISC is bringing the issues associated with this increasingly complex area to the attention of the communities that it serves.
This document describes recent work on e-assessment within the JISC e-learning programme.
Impact drivers and influencers
e-Assessment - our definition
The end-to-end electronic assessment processes where ICT is used for the presentation of assessment and the recording of responses.
There are 3 main areas that impact on and are affected by e-assessment:
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Institutional strategic, cultural and operational
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Technical infrastructure, delivery, security, content design, presentation, item banking, standards, interoperability, accessibility
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Pedagogical new opportunities for learning and teaching
Other key activities that impact on e-Assessment
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Developments in e-portfolios: issues of ownership, short-term/lifelong records
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JISC’s partnership with Becta, the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and other stakeholders to provide a cohesive approach to e-assessment and e-portfolios for schools, post-16 and HE.
JISC-funded e-assessment developments
Descriptions of the e-assessment projects can be found below. Individual projects rarely focus on one particular e-assessment area such as institutional pedagogical or technical; most are informed by and related to each other. Several projects cross all three areas, and so are described in three main sections:
Mapping the terrain
Advanced e-Assessment Techniques
The aim of the project was to provide JISC and its community with a review of state-of-the-art techniques in e-assessment which should be considered for application in UK HE and FE settings.
This JISC study was designed to build a significant body of information about who is using different techniques, the associated issues and the benefits of advanced e-assessments. This review will contribute to subsequent work to define and develop a roadmap of future e-assessment research and development activities within the JISC e-learning programme.
Report on Summative e-Assessment Quality
The report on summative e-Assessment Quality (REAQ) project surveyed quality assurance (QA) activities commonly undertaken in summative e-assessment by UK Higher Education (HE) Practitioners and others. The project focused on what denotes high quality in summative e-assessment for the interviewees and the stops that they take to meet their own standards.
Formative e-Assessment
This project developed a domain map for formative e-assessment based on a review of relevant literature in the field of formative assessment and e-assessment as well as an analysis of aspects of prevailing assessment practice in technology-enhanced post-16 contexts nationally and beyond. Project outcomes include a set of recommendations, a literature review as well as a set of case studies of existing practice in formative e-assessment. On the basis of the case studies the project delineated a set of key processes involved in effective formative (e-) assessment practice as well as a number of technical requirements for formative assessment systems, components and processes.
e-Assessment roadmap
This project (completed in April 2006) provided an overview of the current drivers and barriers to e-assessment in post-16 education, covering summative (or high stakes) assessment, formative (or low stakes) assessment and diagnostic testing. The survey identified experts’ opinions on the following issues:
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The timings of policy implementation and realisation in HE and FE
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How e-assessment can help to reduce the burden of undertaking high quality assessment
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How e-assessment can contribute to improving the quality of e-learning
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The implications for the vision set by institutional, regulatory and national policy documents
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Visions for the future
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Barriers to these visions
JISC plans to update the roadmap during 2009.
FREMA: Framework Reference Model for Assessment
The FREMA project provides an Assessment Reference Model for systems in the assessment domain of e-learning that are built on top of Service-Oriented Architectures; such as Web Services and the Grid, and in particular the JISC e-Framework.
The Assessment Reference Model begins to describe how the assessment domain maps to the e-Framework and thus acts as a driver for implementation and evaluation. FREMA aims to ease the development of further web services and promote the re-use of existing ones and will be fully integrated into the e-Framework knowledge base.
Publications
Guide to Effective Practice with e-Assessment
Effective assessment in a digital age
A new guide in the JISC Effective Practice series is being produced to complement the JISC guide to e-assessment, Effective Practice with e-Assessment (JISC 2007) and the more broadly based guide to technology-enhanced learning, Effective Practice in a Digital Age (JISC 2009). To find out more information on the new guide, which will be launched in September 2010, and to pre-order your copy |
This document combines:
- The e-assessment roadmap
- The e-assessment glossary
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A set of e-assessment case studies of innovative and effective practice involving 55 institutions across the UK and large-scale assessment outside the FE and HE sectors. The studies cover issues such as innovation, effectiveness, maturity, accessibility, confidence-based testing and single champions in an institution.
Assessment Symposium - Where next for assessment in a digital age?
The JISC e-Learning Programme recently ran an Assessment Symposium entitled – Where next for assessment in a digital age. This event was held with invited experts to inform the development of the Effective Assessment in a Digital Age publication and also to feed in ideas for future funded activity in the area of technology-enhanced assessment and feedback.
Presentations from this event
Developing Tools
AQuRate A QTI 2 Authoring Tool
The AQuRate project has developed an open source, QTI v2 standards compliant, platform independent question authoring tool with API.
The Minibix project has developed an open source item banking system for QTI v2 items capable of supporting both high-stakes private item banks and low-stakes item banks for sharing questions. The tool interoperates with the HEA Physical sciences item bank . The project team will provide a QTI SUM to the e-Framework.
ASDEL: A QTI2 Item and Assessment Delivery Engine
The ASDEL project has developed an open source QTI v2 assessment delivery engine that can be deployed as a stand-alone web application or as part of a SOA enabled VLE. The delivery engine includes assessment developer tools such as a QTI v2 validator. The tools interoperate with ASDEL and Minibix and provide a Moodle connector.
MathAssess is a composite application demonstrating join up between ASDEL, AQuRATE, Minibix and SnuggleTex to cater for specific mathematics e-assessment requirements.
WebPA is an open source online peer assessment system which has been developing in maturity since 2006. It now supports peer assessment of group work, SOA design and integration with VLEs.
The project produced a simple web service enabling very easy production of a popular subset of QTI questions from any MCQFM consuming application thus supporting the community of QTI development practitioners to further disseminate the standard.
The Xmarks project has developed components to allow the exchange of assessment information between an institution’s student records system and virtual learning environment, using a web services model. The project is aimed at developers within further and higher education institutions who are looking for a way to synchronise assessment and marks data.
This project further developed OpenMentor, a learning support tool for teachers in further and higher education, which helps them by providing reflective comments on their assessment and feedback of student assignments and coursework.
PyAssess provides an open source toolkit for implementing QTI v2-based assessment (particularly marking) services in Python, building on the Python QTI v1.2 to v2.0 migration tool produced earlier. The project also produced a command line demonstrator to illustrate the use of the toolkit and support the testing and debugging of complex questions.
This project scoped and implemented services to enable the packaging of assessment items for storage in an item bank and the search and retrieval services necessary for the use of item banks.
A software design project to define functional requirements for an item bank tool to support storage, exchange and analysis of high-stakes assessment items for use in UK further and higher education.
Piloting innovative use of e-assessment
This project aims to derive a personalised e learning assessment and reporting model which meets the needs of work based learners, local employers and the training provider, based on e-assessment of engineering students employed by Rolls Royce and studying at Derby College.
This project is exploring the role of e-assessment in enhancing the student experience of HE students in an FE college.
www.jisc.ac.uk/eassesswales
JISC Services to support e-assessment
Established to monitor interoperability initiatives in e-assessment in FE and HE, the Special Interest Group (SIG) for assessment also monitors wider developments in the technology and application of e-assessment. The SIG is run by the JISC-CETIS innovation service and includes a mailing list and regular open meetings.
JISC infoNet offers information on e-assessment through its Effective Use of VLEs infoKit. JISC infoNet is an Advisory Service promoting good practice and innovation within the education sector.
This service offers help and advice on the plagiarism surrounding e-assessment.
Netskills offers workshops and support materials on assessment and communications for e-Learning.
TechDis provides advice on accessibility in relation to e-assessment.
| Contact |
Further information |
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Tish Roberts
Director e-Learning |
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