I enjoyed a really useful and interesting day out at our Assessment Symposium on Tuesday – well worth the cross-border trek to substitute for our Austria-stranded childminder. It was organised to support the production of our new effective practice publication on technology-enhanced assessment, but was a great opportunity to explore many of the issues with assessment practice, and how technology may be able to help change things. Change was a recurrent theme of the day, in fact: while we obviously need to appreciate what works in current assessment systems and practice, there are many situations in which technology can support course teams in taking a fresh approach, always remembering that it’s important to consider what you can stop doing, as well as adding new things.
Views were presented from the student, quality, technology, practitioner and staff development/organisational support perspectives, and while each had a different emphasis, and we were rather drowning in lists of principles for effective assessment, there was a large degree of consensus. Key issues that emerged included the importance of: skills in assessment design; communication with students around assessment; good models of institutional support; formative assessment; using the information obtained through assessment to give feedback to students and feed back into teaching processes; and having people or teams on hand who understand the discipline, effective assessment practice, and the affordances of the technology. One thing which I was pleased to see, with my background in administration-related work for JISC, was the recognition that technology can be very powerful in managing assessment, interpreting results, identifying problematic subject areas, students at risk, and helping to inform teaching, assessment, and student support. On the flip side, something I was surprised not to see mentioned was e-portfolios, despite lots of talk about the sort of reflection and feedback processes which they can support.
As with so many processes within education, trying to work out how technology can improve aspects of assessment is a powerful opportunity to identify and address problems with existing processes. Large student numbers and the importance of giving rapid, useful feedback to students are significant challenges to traditional assessment practices, and it is important that technology does more than just paper over the cracks. Beyond that, opinions differed on whether you need to knock the whole wall down or do some careful re-pointing of your existing bricks!
Some suggestions for JISC work in this area going forward were to seek to drive wider take-up of technology-enhanced assessment in all its many forms, embedded into teaching and assessment practice, through work on articulating, demonstrating and evaluating the benefits of this for learners, teaching staff and institutions: tackling the business case or ‘what’s in it for me?’ Another focus may be to promote greater discussion between technology specialists, assessment specialists, teaching staff and learners, so that approaches and systems are fit for purpose.
Presentations from the day are available from the JISC e-learning pages.