BBC News has the story of a Norwegian trial of using laptops for exams. Online Assessment is nothing new, the technology for it has been part of the web since that start. The hard part is summative, high stakes assessment - Exams. Not only do you need to be able to prevent cheating, you need to be able to have a rock solid, secure, robust process that can withstand Exam board scrutiny. This is tough, and companies like Prometric (who do the Irish driving test exams now) deal with this by running fully proctored exams, as well as using software tools like the one described in the BBC article.
An easier use of online assessment is for formative and low stakes assessment. Little tests along the way help to tell students if they are on track, but they don't contribute enough to the final grade to make them likely to be a point of challenge. Pre-assessment is also a good use of this kind of test - run a little test at the start of the module on things they aught to know before starting your course. It can help them, and you, identify who is in trouble long before the big exam.
Formative and low stakes assessment is a lot easier to manage online. Here in UCC, Blackboard has a tool for running tests like this built right in. Plan on a little time to figure it out and load in the questions, but it isn't difficult to use. Again, if you work in UCC, it's part of my job to help you with this. I'm planning some workshops on it over the summer, please email if you are interested.
Like most Technology Assisted Learning tools, the hard part of Online Assessment is the Assessment bit. Writing good machine-gradable questions is much harder than conventional essay type questions. There is a tendancy there to write questions about recollection of facts, the Pub Quiz /"Who wants to be a millionaire" type question. Sometime this is what you need. It's hard to grasp British History if you don't know when the Battle of Bosworth Field was, but it's harder to write a machine gradable question to find out if they know the what and why of it.
It takes time to write these kinds of questions, but time you will save at the other end in marking. Machine gradable tests, conducted online, can help you understand how larger classes are doing and if they are keeping up without generating hundreds of paper sheets to be marked or scanned. Take some time over the summer to prep some questions, and try it out next term. If you need help (and work in UCC), drop me an eMail r.cosgrave@ucc.ie
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