This area takes forward the work already done by the JISC under the banner of e-assessment, in particular developing standards and services that can support sharing of assessment items, and technologies to reduce the burden of marking and administration. Assessment for learning is a significant new area of development and one that has overlaps with both e-portfolios and Learning activities and resources.
JISC’s aims in this area are to:
- explore and develop effective e-assessment practice through the development of standards and piloting of related technologies
- provide guidance for institutions on effective e-assessment practice
Some key issues and challenges we have identified in this area are:
- Need to transform institutional policies and procedures to embed e-assessment effectively
- Diversity of assessment practices across sectors
- Diversity of standards and practices relating to item banks and repositories
- Need for incentives to share, re-purpose and re-use
- Shortage of evidence/expertise in assessment FOR learning (rather than high-stakes summative assessment) and in assessment types other than objective testing
Some priorities for project funding that we have provisionally identified are:
- Projects that pilot and/or demonstrate use of e-assessment tools to support effective curriculum design
- Institutional demonstrator projects to address item requirements as learning objects for repositories
- Demonstrator projects to explore formative uses of e-assessment
- Cross institutional demonstrator projects to explore discipline differences in uses and requirements
- Explore innovative assessment technologies such as free-text analysis, games-based assessments, web 2.0…
- Create a QTI specification development road map and necessary conversion tools
- Develop plug-in tools to support simple test generator
Develop infokit on institutional embedding of e-assessment
Please add your own comments on this activity area, including key issues and challenges we may have missed, and your own ideas for priority development projects.