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Danni, the wonder dog, with her owner Cliff Beevers, chair of the eAssessment Association
e-Assessment Scotland 2010:
Marking the Decade
University of Dundee, 3rd September
In 2009, we ran Scotland’s largest e-Assessment conference, bringing together speakers from schools, colleges and universities to showcase innovation and best practice in the field. It was a bit of squeeze in the Hilton that day, with just over 170 people coming from all across the country.
In 2010, the conference moved to a larger venue in the heart of the University of Dundee’s campus and broadened its scope to examine how technology could enhance assessment in education, training and the workplace. Over 260 of you came to eAssessment Scotland 2010 – making it the largest single day annual e-Assessment conference in the UK!
Featuring keynotes from the leading names in e-Assessment (and also Danni the wonder dog - pictured right sporting her own eAssessment Scotland jacket), seminars and case studies covering the latest advances, practical hands-on sessions, 30 poster presentations, and the second year of the Scottish e-Assessment Awards – it all contributed to make this the one of the best events of the year.
View the presentations and posters from the 2010 eAssessment Scotland conference below:
Keynotes
What Can We Learn About Assessment from Video Games?
Derek Robertson, National Adviser for Emerging Technologies and Learning, Learning and Teaching Scotland
What is the Impact of New Forms of Social and Participatory Media on Assessment Practices?
Gráinne Conole, Professor of e-Learning, Institute of Educational Technology (IET), Open University
What Can e-Assessment Do for Learning and Teaching?
Cliff Beevers, OBE, Chair of the e-Assessment Association
What Does the Future Hold for e-Assessment?
Martin Ripley, 21st Century Assessment
Workshops
Virtual e-Assessment
Jenny Kellie and Jackie Mullen, Learn Direct & Build
Assessment of Student e-Portfolios Using the Law of Comparative Judgement
Matt Wingfield, TAG Developments
Susan McLaren, University of Edinburgh
BriteStep - Automated Practical IT Assessments
Linda Steedman, eCom Scotland
e-Assessment and Open Educational Resources – the Virtuous Circle
Shazia Ahmed, University of Glasgow
Leslie Fletcher, Liverpool John Moores University
Sue Milne, ELandWeb Ltd.
What’s happening? Twitter for Assessment, Feedback and Communication
Martin Hawksey, Regional Support Centre Scotland North & East
A Word in Your Lug
Will Stewart, University of Bradford
Seminars
Automatic e-Assessment of Mathematical Word Problems (STACK)
Chris Sangwin, University of Birmingham
e-Portfolios and assessment in Health Sciences: Supporting Professional Development in a Clinical Setting
Judith Lane and Kristina Mountain, Queen Margaret University
Don’t Make a Legal Ass of Assessment
Jason Miles-Campbell, JISC Legal
I’m Useless at Maths! How Can We Overcome this Mindset with Student Primary Teachers through the Use of e-Assessment?
Dr. Sheila Henderson, University of Dundee
Computer-assisted Language Exams for Federal Government Employees
Bert Wylin, Televic Education
Collaborative e-Assessments: Wiki Work and the Group Grade
Clara O’Shea and Hamish Macleod, University of Edinburgh
Instant Mobile Feedback for Community-based ESOL
Justin Sales, Stevenson College Edinburgh
Colin Buchanan, Scotland’s Colleges
Overcoming the Barriers to the Adoption of e-Assessment
Martyn Ware, Scottish Qualifications Authority
e-Assessment and the Independent Learner
Phil Butcher, Open University
National Implementation for ECDL (European Computer Driving Licence)
Isidoros Moulas, Seventron Limited
WebPA - A Practical Approach to Peer Assessment
Adam Crawford, Loughborough University
How e-Assessment Can Bring Significant Added Value to Maths Lessons
Margaret Ferguson, Hermitage Academy
Keynotes
What Can We Learn About Assessment from Video Games?
Derek Robertson
National Adviser for Emerging Technologies and Learning, Learning and Teaching Scotland
When you watch children play video games have you ever thought about how the progress they make and the skill levels they attain can be linked to assessment, a vital ingredient in the teaching and learning process? It is clear that ‘learning’ is happening when children play games but how is the assessment of this learning happening and what is it about the world of the video game that encourages and nurtures this apparent intrinsic motivation to improve performance?
In this presentation Derek Robertson will share some examples of game play from schools and discuss what schools and industry can learn about the way young people assess their learning when they play video games and what opportunities there may be to support the player/learner’s intrinsic ability to assess themselves and their peers.
Derek Robertson’s career in education has seen him work as a primary teacher, staff tutor, university lecturer and now as a National Adviser for Emerging Technologies and Learning with Learning and Teaching Scotland. His passion and belief in using technology, in particular computer games, in schools has underpinned the work that he has led via the LTS Consolarium initiative.
This belief began when he witnessed two boys in his lower ability maths group engaging with a complex problem-solving environment on the Super Nintendo console. He was astonished by their level of engagement and how they had used their own suite of strategies to overcome the problems. It made him reflect on the context of the game and why it facilitated such impressive abilities in children who had not shown it in the world of learning that they were expected to engage with in class.
Now leading games-based learning initiatives for Learning and Teaching Scotland via the Consolarium, many of his award-winning ideas for using games such as Dr Kawashima, Guitar Hero, Endless Ocean and Professor Layton have been embraced by teachers and have become embedded in Scottish classrooms. Derek speaks to local, national and international education audiences about the innovative and progressive work with games and learning in Scotland.
What Can We Learn About Assessment from Video Games? from Kenji Lamb on Vimeo.
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What is the Impact of New Forms of Social and Participatory Media on Assessment Practices?
Gráinne Conole
Professor of e-Learning, Institute of Educational Technology (IET), Open University
The talk will outline new technologies and provide examples of how they are being used in learning and teaching. It will consider what impact these new technologies have on assessment practices and will put forward the OU’s Learning Design initiative as a new methodology for helping teachers design assessments.
Gráinne Conole joined IET as chair of e-learning in April 2006, previously having been Professor of Educational Innovation in Post-Compulsory Education at the University of Southampton. Current research interests include the use, integration and evaluation of Information and Communication Technologies and e-learning and its impact on organisational change.
With research, development and project management experience across the educational and technical domains; funding sources have included HEFCE, ESRC, EU and commercial sponsors. Current projects include the JISC-funded learner experience project, PB-LXP with Mary Thorpe and the ESRC TLRP Technology-Enhanced Learning project, PI led by Eileen Scanlon and Mike Sharples, and closer to home, the OU Learning Design Initiative.
What is the Impact of New Forms of Social and Participatory Media on Assessment Practices? from Kenji Lamb on Vimeo.
What Can e-Assessment Do for Learning and Teaching?
Cliff Beevers, OBE
Chair of the e-Assessment Association, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, Heriot-Watt University
This talk outlines the e-Assessment Association policy that technology should serve education advising that any e-Assessment solution should seek to build on research principles. Such research includes, amongst others, the work of the Assessment Reform Group (ARG).
In general, the eAA favours a more complex question structure for automated assessment than multiple choice or its variants permit; the effective deployment of fast and accurate feedback as students progress through a question and the efficient use of data generated during tests to enhance the whole experience. This presentation will describe successful deployments of both formative and summative e-Assessment and indicate a way forward for the delivery of automated assessment.
Professor Cliff Beevers taught Mathematics for over thirty years at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and was granted the title Professor Emeritus in 2005. Cliff has worked for over two decades in the area of Computer-Aided Assessment mainly in the field of Mathematics since 1984. Through projects like CALM, MathWise, Interactive PastPapers, SCHOLAR and PASS-IT, he has sought to enhance the student experience in both secondary and tertiary education. In 2003, he was awarded an OBE for his contributions to Scottish Education. Currently, Cliff is acting Chair of the e-Assessment Association.
What Can e-Assessment Do for Learning and Teaching? from Kenji Lamb on Vimeo.
What Does the Future Hold for e-Assessment?
Martin Ripley
21st Century Assessment
Martin Ripley is a leading international adviser on 21st century education and technology. He is a co-founder of the 21st Century Learning Alliance, and owner of World Class Arena Limited. Martin has spent 18 years in test development, which involved roles as director of England’s school testing programme and director of the government’s e-Strategy Unit.
At the heart of innovation in the design of tests in England, Martin developed England’s national assessment record for 5-year-old children, England’s compulsory testing in mathematics and science for 11-year-olds, and introduced the UK’s first national, on-demand testing programme. He also developed World Class Tests – on-screen problem solving tests that are now used worldwide as a screening tool for gifted students.
What Does the Future Hold for e-Assessment? from Kenji Lamb on Vimeo.
Workshops
BriteStep - Automated Practical IT Assessments
Linda Steedman, eCom Scotland
In this hands-on session, e-Learning & e-Assessment experts eCom Scotland will demonstrate the latest IT Course featuring the revolutionary ‘BriteStep’ assessment question type technology.
The BriteStep technology addresses several of e-Assessment’s shortcomings and provides the basis for creating automated practical IT assessments that are automatically marked whilst allowing the educator the option to evaluate all the actions of the students. BriteStep integrates seamlessly with standard business software and can be used to test a full range of skills of students.
eCom Scotland will showcase the non-technical approach to developing a BriteStep assessment and then allow participation in the assessment to see how BriteStep:
- Captures users actions as they interact with the business software used;
- Stores the information for processing;
- Compares the stored information against templates to evaluate student performance;
- Learns new actions on the fly and stores them for future use.
The BriteStep approach provides the basis for generating a structure far superior to any existing system designed to train personnel the use of IT software and can readily be extended or integrated to use in e-Assessment engines.
Download the BriteStep: Automation in IT Assessment article published in Technology Enhanced Learning, 2010.
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Assessment of Student e-Portfolios Using the Law of Comparative Judgement
Matt Wingfield, TAG (left)
Susan McLaren,University of Edinburgh (right)
In 2004, a team at Goldsmith’s College, embarked on a 5-year pilot project, Project eScape, to investigate the use of e-Portfolios to dynamically capture live project-based student coursework. The pilot has since been extended into Scotland under a project run by Edinburgh University under the direction of Susan McLaren.
A key development through the latter stages of the project was the development of a web-based Comparative Pairs Assessment Engine, which enabled more subjective assessment criteria, such as creativity and collaboration, to be judged through the implementation of the ‘Law of Comparative Judgement’, as initially described by L.L. Thurstone in the 1927. Uniquely, the integration of a web-based Comparative Pairs Assessment Engine within an e-portfolio context, made this innovative and highly accurate form of assessment available globally for the very first time.
This workshop will be comprised of two sections:
- A brief presentation that will provide an introduction to The Law of Comparative Judgement and its implementation through Project eScape; and
- A hands-on session where the delegates will have the opportunity to take part in a live comparative pairs assessment session.
The overall aim of the workshop will be to demonstrate how simple it is to implement this form of assessment in relation to student work. It will also look at the more recent research done into the accuracy of this approach when compared against traditional paper-based/hand marking, and will discuss the benefits offered to students, institutions and accreditation bodies by this form of assessment. Finally, the workshop will not only provide delegates with the chance to try the technology first hand, but also to discuss the opportunities and challenges associated with implementing this form of assessment.
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Virtual e-Assessment
Jenny Kellie, Learn Direct & Build (left)
Jackie Mullen, Learn Direct & Build (right)
This hands-on workshop will offer two different e-Assessment experiences that are applicable across the curriculum and to any vocational sector.
The first experience is set in the 3D virtual world of the Safe Use of Fire Extinguishers and is narrated by a famous Scottish film star. It centres on dealing safely with five different types of fire. You will complete your training in the virtual training rooms then be asked to assess each fire, follow safety procedures and choose the appropriate fire extinguisher to put each of the fires out.
The second assessment experience will ask you to look at an e-Learning pack using text, flash animation and video. You will then be asked to complete drag-and drop formative and summative assessments related to the pack which will provide you with instant feedback on your results and which areas, if any, need to be revised.
Visit the Learn Direct & Build website to watch a video detailing the 3D Safe Use of Fire Extinguishers unit and learn more about their other projects.
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e-Assessment and Open Educational Resources
– the Virtuous Circle
Shazia Ahmed, University of Glasgow (left)
Leslie Fletcher, Liverpool John Moores University (middle)
Sue Milne, ELandWeb Ltd. (right)
A suite of e-Assessment tools which are compliant with the QTIv2.1 specification were developed under the MathAssess project and have now been made user-ready under the recently-completed FETLAR project. These tools include standards-compliant extensions which are particularly useful for mathematics and other numerate disciplines.
FETLAR facilitated the release of the CALMAT mathematics software under a Creative Commons licence, enabling the 2000 or so randomised questions contained within CALMAT to be extracted and translated into current formats which should provide the means for their continued curation and development. So far, only a sample of these questions has been converted; in doing so, however, it has been possible to identify some techniques which may prove valuable to colleagues embarking on the implementation of e-Assessment.
This workshop will use the MathAssess tools to demonstrate these techniques and provide participants with the opportunity to create questions and tests and deploy these in a test within Moodle. Beginning with a simple question we shall bring in additional features such as random parameters and targeted feedback. Delegates will then be invited to adapt the question for use in the context of their own discipline, and contribute the results to the question bank, after which tests will be constructed from the resulting questions.
We hope that workshop participants will become some of the early adopters of these tools and help to create a user community.
Download the e-Assessment and Open Educational Resources – the Virtuous Circle slides and additonal files from the workshop.
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What’s happening? Twitter for Assessment, Feedback and Communication
Martin Hawksey, Regional Support Centre Scotland North & East
Twitter is a social networking site which continues to divide personal opinion. Some believe that the micro-blogging service is just an opportunity celebrities to boost their ego with millions of followers or just full of people ‘tweeting’ what they had for lunch. Whilst some users do use Twitter for this purpose a number of academics are now discovering that Twitter has the potential to support teaching and learning, providing a means to enable students to discuss and share within their personal learning network. Before you dismiss Twitter there are some basics worth considering: the service is free to register, status updates can be made from the most basic mobile phone, and users can monitor conversations through multiple means including, for some users, sending free SMS updates.
This workshop uses some of the features of Twitter highlighted above to let participants experience and use this service as a free electronic voting system (EVS), for classroom administration (assessment notification/reminders) and to monitor real-time student evaluation. As this technology is relatively new the workshop will begin with an overview of basic Twitter interaction making it suitable for novice and expert users.
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A Word in Your Lug
Will Stewart, University of Bradford
As tutors, feedback is an important part of our support for students. Through our feedback we help them make sense of their learning, suggest ways in which they can improve their skills or techniques, praise what they have done well, and help move them forward to further learning. Much of this feedback takes the form of written annotations on a student’s work, accompanied by a summative critique at the end. We hope that our students will take heed of these comments and follow our recommendations in order to improve their subsequent work. There are a number of problems associated with this transmission model of feedback, not least the assumption that students will translate and decode our comments in the way we intended them to (Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, 2006).
While the National Student Survey indicates high levels of satisfaction with teaching in our universities, students are less happy with the assessment and feedback that we provide. Many feel that they receive feedback that is neither detailed nor useful in helping them clarify things they did not understand. In order for feedback to be useful, it has to be meaningful (Laurillard, 2002), with the best feedback actively engaging tutors and students in a dialogue that supports learning (Price et al, 2008).
This workshop will examine the use of audio feedback as a way not only of providing more meaningful feedback to students, but also as a channel for engaging students in a dialogue about their learning.
Seminars
Automatic e-Assessment of Mathematical Word Problems
Chris Sangwin, University of Birmingham
A “word problem” is more complex than an arithmetic question. In particular, a student has to model the situation using a system of equations, and often then solve these equations to obtain the solution of the problem. Sometimes solutions have to be discarded as “unrealistic”, an important critical judgement by students. Hence, word problem usually involve “multiple steps” and higher order skills. For example, the following problem requires an appropriate choice of units (minutes vs hours) and results in a system of one linear equation and one quadratic. There are two potential solutions for the velocity, but one is negative.
In a railway journey of 90km an increase of 5 kilometers per hour in the velocity decreases the time taken by 15 minutes. What is the velocity?
Incidentally, these questions have a long and interesting history, and they are much studied by educational researchers.
In this talk we will explain how solutions to such problems can be automatically assessed using the CAA system STACK. In particular, we will focus on how to automatically establish properties of systems of algebraic equations using a computer algebra system as part of this process. For example a teacher would certainly like to know when two systems of equations are “the same”.
Download the Automatic e-Assessment of Mathematical Word Problems presentation slides here.
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e-Portfolios and assessment in Health Sciences: Supporting Professional Development in a Clinical Setting
Judith Lane, Queen Margaret University (left)
Kristina Mountain, Queen Margaret University (right)
This presentation draws upon two case studies from Community Health Nursing and Physiotherapy which demonstrate the role of e-Portfolios as an assessment tool linking to professional development:
- In our first case study, students on the BSc (Hons) in Community Health Nursing programme develop a Unifying Specialist Practice (USP) e-Portfolio. The e-Portfolio provides a means to assess the process of learning in terms of not just professional and practice development but the social, cultural and political context the students are working in. The use of ePortfolio means that the student’s evidence for each module within the USP Portfolio can be developed and stored within the ePortfolio space and the developing portfolio can be shared with the student’s Practice Teacher for formative assessment and then submitted at the end of the semester for summative assessment.
- Students on the MSc (pre-registration) Physiotherapy programme are introduced to the e-Portfolio in the first few weeks of the programme. Regular summative and formative e-Portfolio assessments require students to demonstrate learning achievements and on-going learning needs in relation to module learning outcomes. The final assessment uses the NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework to facilitate the students’ transition into qualified working practice. Feedback, provided in written and audio format is linked to the e-Portfolio, encourages students to build upon their achievements.
This presentation also discusses how learners engage with e-Portfolios. We recommend an early introduction to familiarise students with the software and provide feedback before students undertake activities out in the clinical workplace. Using e-Portfolios to assess both university and practice-based learning encourages the linking of theory and practice by asking students to reflect on learning and provide specific examples of evidence from the practice-based environment. Finally we make recommendations for tutors on how they can use the e-Portfolio as an innovative and inspirational assessment tool.
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Don’t Make a Legal Ass of Assessment
Jason Miles-Campbell, JISC Legal
More and more learning providers and examining bodies are adopting or considering the adoption of computer-mediated assessment. At the same time, learners have a growing expectation of polished, hitch-free delivery, and are less shy about taking action when things go wrong. Assessment is often crucially important to the learner, and often a matter of anxiety. At the same time, advances in many areas of e-learning take place due to the work of enthusiasts and champions, and, in many cases, from a bottom-up experimental approach. With this background, it is vital that a proper risk assessment takes places before e-Assessment is unleashed (whatever the potential benefits may be), and this should include an understanding and evaluation of the legal risks involved.
This presentation will consider the particular legal risks which arise due to the particular nature of computer-mediated assessment. It will cover the questions surrounding: collection, processing and transfer of personal information (relating to the learner’s identity and performance); the inclusion of third party materials within the e-Assessment – in particular the intellectual property issues; what liability may arise from a failure of the technology used to deliver the assessment; what the legal consequences of a student hacking or cheating the e-Assessment are; the assessing organisation’s disability equality duties in relation to the design and delivery of e-assessment; and, finally, the legal situation with respect to a student refusing to accept assessment by computer-mediated means.
In summary, the presentation will show that there are no insurmountable legal obstacles to the deployment of e-Assessment technologies, though care should be taken to ensure that their delivery is professional, robust and reliable in order to mitigate risk of legal action against a negligent e-assessment deliverer, and the consequent loss of reputation and confidence. On a more positive side, an explicit statement showing that the risks inherent in e-Assessment have been evaluated and eliminated or reduced is likely to improve acceptance and confidence.
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I’m Useless at Maths! How Can We Overcome this Mindset with Student Primary Teachers through the Use of e-Assessment?
Dr. Sheila Henderson, University of Dundee
Despite having to possess minimum mathematics entrance qualifications for primary education courses, it is often the case that students’ own knowledge of primary level mathematics is not as sound as it might be. In addition many students’ own experiences of the subject while at school have resulted in often negative mindsets to it. With Scotland slipping further down international tables in mathematics our primary teachers play a vital role in producing skilled mathematicians for the future. It is therefore vital that those studying to be primary teachers have high levels of mathematics competence and that they view the subject in a positive light.
This presentation, in which your own mathematics knowledge may be tested – anonymously of course – will aim to look at two e-assessment packages, Turning Point and Questionmark Perception. These have been used in mathematics education lectures with student primary teachers at the University of Dundee with three aims in mind:
- to engage students in mathematics so that they can adopt more positive mindsets to the subject;
- to raise students’ awareness of the content and level of primary mathematics they will have to teach;
- to raise their mathematics competence levels.
Data collected from the Questionmark Perception tool have resulted in a study that was published in the Journal of Education for Teaching, and reported in the national press and Newsnight Scotland.
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Computer-assisted Language Exams for Federal Government Employees
Bert Wylin, Televic Education
In online (language) assessments, language is not the only discipline that matters. This presentation reports on a scientific screening, adaptation and extension of the national language exam for federal employees in Belgium. The complete overhaul of the exam can be seen as a model for state-of-the-art integration of new technology, sound psychometric methodology and the introduction of a contemporary vision on language learning and language testing, in line with the Common European Framework for Languages (CEFL).
According to a more modern view on language acquisition and language skills, new tasks were created for testing people’s communicative language skills (reading and listening comprehension). In line with the CEFL, new items were created for functional and communicative testing, based on a description of the professional domain in which the testee is going to work. The introduction of smart (technological) question types allowed for the use of authentic language materials (multimedia) in the exam. Interesting (IRT-based) psychometric metatags (like Pval and Logit) were added for each item. Finally, a new online preparatory learning environment has been created, including thousands of exercises and simulation exams, with tracking and logging of people’s progress and results, thus allowing a truly useful training before the exam.
The focus of this presentation will be the close interaction between technology (the Edumatic framework), psychometric methodology (IRT) and (language) didactics.
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Collaborative e-assessments: Wiki Work and the Group Grade
Clara O’Shea, University of Edinburgh (left)
Hamish Macleod, University of Edinburgh (right)
This presentation will examine the challenges and benefits of creating collaborative e-assessment. It will outline two cases where wikis were used as class-wide, group assessment tasks in an online postgraduate masters programme. Though both wiki assessments were based on collaboration, group work and student- led practices, there were interesting differences in terms of weighting, individual ownership of pages and centrality of the learning experience.
We will outline the experiences of tutors and students in understanding, managing and assessing collaborative online assessments and raise issues such as scaffolding, tutor roles, the challenges of group assessment and how to evaluate academic discourse that is ‘born digital’. We will draw on key aspects of the literature and consider further strategies for implementing similar activities.
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Instant Mobile Feedback for Community-based ESOL
Justin Sales, Stevenson College Edinburgh (left)
Colin Buchanan, Scotland’s Colleges (right)
ESOL students consistently identify speaking and listening as the skills they most need to develop. Debates, presentations and pronunciation drills are all used to develop spoken fluency and accuracy, but it has always been hard to give regular, detailed feedback in a timely manner – until now!
A simple, yet successful, model has been developed and implemented through a partnership between Scotland’s Colleges, Stevenson College Edinburgh (SCE) and ipadio.com, using mobile phones and web technologies. Using ipadio, ‘the home of live broadcasting’, learners broadcast their submissions direct from their phones to their own secure, personalised channels at a time and place that suits them. Peers and tutors are then alerted via RSS, Twitter or e-mail, and can then listen and respond using their mobiles.
Peers provide feedback on their friends’ spoken language files, creating a virtuous cycle of broadcasting, feedback and improvement, with immediate alerts. Tutors can also upload pre-recorded exemplar presentations and learning intentions for the students to listen to prior to lessons.
Scotland’s Colleges, SCE and the learners are excited by this technology, especially as the model can be successfully transferred and used in other areas of the curriculum to great effect. This presentation is intended to be lively, interactive and participative. We are confident that, as the use of ipadio is widely used in the worlds of commerce, leisure and education, this simple yet highly effective e-Assessment feedback model can easily be implemented to suit delegates’ own situations.
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Overcoming the Barriers to the Adoption of e-Assessment
Martyn Ware, Scottish Qualifications Authority
As part of the SQA/College Quality Enhancement Forum, an e-Assessment sub-group was established to advise on approaches to enhance quality in the delivery of SQA qualifications. The ultimate aim of the group was to improve the experience of SQA qualifications and assessments for learners and centres, though it was recognised quite early on that much of the output would be relevant to those looking to establish e-Assessment within their organisations.
The e-Assessment sub-group focuses on ways in which quality can be enhanced when working in an electronic environment. Sub-group work to date has involved consultation with groups such as JISC, HMIE and a survey of Scottish college staff on e-Assessment issues, such as the benefits of and barriers to the technology, and identifying existing and required resources to support the use of e-Assessment in centres.
This presentation will highlight some of the key findings from the survey and consultations carried out earlier this year and also put forward a series proposals on how the group will seek to progress the uptake of e-Assessment in the sector.
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e-Assessment and the Independent Learner
Phil Butcher, Open University
This presentation reports on how a foundation in computer based learning has influenced the Open University’s development of on-line assessments supported by the OpenMark e-assessment system and how this in turn is influencing current developments of Moodle.
Phil Butcher is a Fellow in the Centre for Open Learning of Mathematics, Science, Computing and Technology at the Open University where he is the co-ordinator of the iCMA (interactive Computer Marked Assessment) Initiative. With colleagues in the Science faculty ,he conceived the ideas behind OpenMark in 1996 and doffs his cap in admiration to his systems software colleagues who have turned those ideas into reality in the intervening years. Since 2005 he has been the OU’s e-assessment adviser and has steered the OU’s on-going developments of OpenMark and the current major rewrite of the Moodle Quiz.
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National Implementation for ECDL (European Computer Driving Licence)
Isidoros Moulas, Seventron Limited
The increasing demand for computer literacy skills worldwide led into the introduction of a number of certification models which, in turn, contributed to the development of the corresponding assessment tools and systems. The ECDL – European Computer Driving Licence is at the forefront of the international computer literacy skills market playing an important role in the specification of digital literacy agenda. It has become a European and international standard of digital literacy skills.
Over recent years a number of e-Assessment tools for the ECDL have evolved. This presentation will discuss the experiences gained from the design, testing and implementation of such an assessment system and its deployment in a big-bang approach on a national basis in Cyprus, serving the certification needs of more than 200 testing centers and more than 20,000 active certification candidates.
The presentation will cover the system’s technical architecture and components, its functionalities and services and examine the pedagogical and educational aspects embedded in the design. It will also highlight the pitfalls and lessons learned in the areas of team building and project management.
Watch these videos to see the TWES (TestWare Exam System) create an example question for MS Excel and an example question for MS Word.
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WebPA - A Practical Approach to Peer Assessment
Adam Crawford, Loughborough University
This presentation will provide an insight into WebPA, an open source online peer assessment tool, funded by JISC, that enables every team member to recognise individual contributions to group work.
The development of group work and leadership skills are essential within both the workplace and the curriculum. However the assessment of group work and leadership skills is difficult for senior managers and academics as many of the activities and interactions within the group occur when they are not present. The only people who know exactly what has happened are the team members themselves. WebPA was developed for this purpose, to provide an efficient, fair and consistent method of collecting and allocating student peer assessment marks to group work.
Originally WebPA was developed for two engineering academics but is now used by 60 academics at Loughborough in 16 departments, it has also been adopted by over 20 UK institutions and there has been recent uptake in Australia and USA. The presentation will describe how the tool has been used in different learning and teaching contexts and disciplines, including the rationale, implementation, benefits and pitfalls.
Practical details on accessing an online demonstrator, the open source code, the background pedagogic research, a WebPA resource pack, and user community will also be provided.
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How e-Assessment Can Bring Significant Added Value to Maths Lessons
Margaret Ferguson, Hermitage Academy
Hermitage Academy has been using formative e-Assessment in Mathematics with students from S1 through to S6. This extended use led to a Scottish e-Assessment Award for Formative e-Assessment in 2009.
This innovative approach made use of the SCHOLAR Intermediate Mathematics material which is based on the SQA curriculum. This highly interactive material was designed to help prepare students for end-of-unit assessment. The approach has allowed for individual progression by pupils to reach their maximum potential in a subject where innate ability needs to be nurtured.
A variety of methods were used with different ability groups, from individual home use to group work within the classroom environment. This presentation will share examples of practice, explore the underlying motivations and share the experiences of both student and teacher.
