By
T. Sanjeevee Jayram, Educator / Correspondent
Cholan Group of Educational Institutions,
Dwarakesh CBSE International School
INTRODUCTION
Assessment lies at the base of analysis of learning experience to assess learning styles, understanding level and determines overall ability and student achievement. Technology can play a significant role in assessment; if it is used appropriately it adds value to any of the learning activities associated with assessment.
e-Assessment is an end-to-end electronic assessment process where Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is used for the management of learning and its development processes from perspective learners, educators and educational institutions. E-Assessment is a web-based method that reflects systematic inferences and judgments to be made about student’s skills, knowledge and capabilities.
ASSESSMENT TYPES
There are four basic types of assessments:
i. Diagnostic
ii. Formative
iii. Summative
iv. Integrative or summative
DIAGNOSTIC ASSESSMENT
It is a traditional assessment in tertiary education and often associated with a negative model designed to identify deficiencies in student’s capabilities (Benseman & Sutton 2008). It is a baseline assessment to determine students’ preparedness for their current learning activities and to allow teachers adjustments expecting majority students participates in learning activities at a meaningful level.
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
This task ensures timely and appropriate feedback, primarily intended to have an impact as the current learning of students to connect potential improvements in student’s performance.
SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT
It is mostly applied to overview students’ performance as a measure of how much they have learnt within a course. This task is used primarily for progress a proxy measure of overall learning.
INTERGRATIVE ASSESSMENT
This is designed to promote and measure student self-study regulations and capabilities associated with lifelong learning. Marks and grades could be used as the indicators of standards. The advantage of integrative assessment is to highlight and provide feedback or judgment on students’ abilities.
CHARACTERISTICS OF INTEGRATIVE ASSESSMENT
1. To make judgment on students’ learning and performance.
2. To define standards and expectations in their responses.
3. To track and analyze their approaches responding to a problem, issue situation or performance.
4. To integrate prior or current feedback into their response.
5. To engage with a meaningful task and reward for their quality of their analysis of meta-cognitive abilities.
E-ASSESSMENT –TO LEARN
E-Assessment drives learning. It provides motivation, opportunity and guidance. It defines mechanism by which achievement is monitored and recognized. In learning we must create a design for opportunity for learning as well as assessment. It takes several strategic issues.
• E-Assessment and personalized feedback offers global delivery of quality learning opportunity.
• E-Assessment allows student profiling with links to target team based support.
• E-Assessment can facilitate student induction and diagnostics.
• E-Assessment can enhance efficiency and even reduce costs.
1. E-ASSESSMENT CHALLENGES
• Are not quick and easy to produce success is dependent as input from both academic authorities and software developers
• Have considerable investment costs
• Can be filled to pre-defined templates which lower the production cost and improve accuracy but limit ambition
• Require rigorous testing
• Require a summative drive for continuing student engagement
• Have a technical expertise that can be a barrier to academic staff
E-Assessment for learning will be a crucial testing methodology for the 21st century because of its exceptional pedagogical and learning systems which require technical skill base, educational resource for further development.
2. E-ASSESSMENT – LEARNING MANAGEMENT
E-assessment involves the use of digital devices to assist in the construction, delivery, storage or reporting of student learning, responses, grades by using desktop computers, laptops, smartphones & iPad, its formats are in multitude text, portable document, multimedia formats, such as sound, video or images, assessments can be undertaken individually small group/large group.
Teachers by using computer tablet construct the assessment task, record and provide feedback & grades to the students. It can also be used to test many different students’ capabilities and analyze students’ responses both to provide feedback to the students on the quality and relevance of their response. E-Assessment is highly sophisticated widespread, can undertake, manipulate directly or remotely.
E-Assessment can be a part of learning management system which can be located and delivered from a central server and assessed by students anywhere and anytime through web browser or isolated in local area networks (LAN) with limited access gateways. It is a digital record which allows to authentic than traditional paper based assessments.
Online assessment rational based the test module provides individualized, targeted feedback with the aim of getting correct answer even their first attempt is wrong. Feedback appears immediately in response to a submitted answer, such that the question and student’s answer still visible finally students are allowed up to three attempts at each questions with an increasing amount attempt and it is evident that instant feedback is effective at promoting learning.
3. PROMOTING LEARNING FEEDBACK
The importance of feedback for learning has been highlighted
• Emphasizing its role in fostering meaningful interaction between student and instructional materials.
• Contributing to students development and retention
• Evaluators can work remotely from both peers and tutors
• GIBBS AND SIMPSON (2004) suggests following conditions on students learning.
- Assessed task capture sufficient study time and effort
- These task distribute students effort evenly across topics and weeks
- These tasks engage students in productive learning actively
- Communicates clear and high expectations to students
- Sufficient student feedback is provided both often enough and in enough details
- The feedback is provided quickly enough to be useful to students
- Feedback focuses on learning rather than on marks or students themselves
- Feedback is linked to the purpose of the assignment and to its criteria
- Feedback is understandable to students
- Feedback is received by students and attended to
- Feedback is acted upon by students to improve their work or learning.
4. E-ASSESSMENT INNOVATION
E-Assessment is an innovative approach in teaching, learning and especially assessment is a valuable tool in the education field for many more reasons, which has potential benefits for students in terms of learning registrations and retention as well as increasing their efficient learning content. E-Assessment offers many advantages over traditional pen and paper exams.
E-Assessment is at its best students receive instant and individual feedback on their work allowing them to form an accurate pictures to progress and to build confidence.
- Is much more realistic, timely and appropriate feedback. It also likes to further reading directed towards self-directed learning
- Immediate feedback focused students work particularly
- Allows students more than one attempt at an answer
- Presents questions in a pre-determined or random order
- Be used for diagnostic, formative and summative assessment
- Guides students to further reading or resources, if they are having difficulty in learning
- Increases students digital literacy
- Increases student engagement and involvement
- Records highly detailed student learning analytics
- Manages teacher work load, corrections, and remedial measures
The use of e-Assessment makes this task manageable, which automatically track many learning analytics as students use this system. It is also helpful for flexible learning, including lifelong learning. E-assessment is innovative as part of learning management systems, much more multiple choice questions, can involve the use of blogs and wikis, self or peer view in the existing social media sites associated with web. It is capable to set virtual media in engaging sophisticated tasks for students.
CONCLUSION
Assessment can be integrated with electronic media that has intrinsic work students, teachers and institutions. E-Assessment offers a range of potential opportunities including:
EFFICIENCY
1. Timeless
2. Flexible delivery
3. Automatic processing responses
4. Effective storage results and grades
EFFECTIVENESS
1. Cost effective
2. Immediate feedback
3. Evolve new question types
AUTHENTICITY
1. Access to people and resources
2. Designed to simulate real world
3. Can set complex tasks
ENGAGEMENT
1. Multimodal formats
2. Can use virtual world
3. Can use self and peer group
REFERENCES
1. Buchanan, T. (2000) The efficacy of a World-Wide Web mediated formative assessment, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 16, 193-200
2. Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2004), Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1, pp 3-31
3. Gibbs, G, (2006) Why assessment is changing, in C. Bryan and K. Clegg (eds), Innovative assessment in Higher Education, Routledge
4. Ross, S, Jordan, S and Butcher, P (2006), Online instantaneous and targeted feedback for remote learners, in C. Bryan and
5. K. Clegg (eds), Innovative assessment in Higher Education, Routledge Yorke, M. (2001) Formative assessment and its relevance to retention, Higher Education Research and Development, 20(2),
6. Curran, K. G. Middleton and C. Doherty, Cheating in Exams with Technology, International Journal of Cyber Ethics in Education, 1(2), 54-62, April-June 2011
7. Gathuri, J., A. Luvanda, S. Matende & S. Kamundi, Impersonation Challenges Associated With E-Assessment of University Students, Journal of Information Engineering and Applications, Vol.4, No.7, 2014, (60-69)
8. Harbin, J.& P.Humphrey, (2013). Online cheating – the case of the emperor’s clothing, elephant in the room, and the 800 lb. gorilla, Journal of Academic and Business Ethics, available on: http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/131450.pdf
9. Williams, S., Tanner , M., & Beard, J. (2012, July/August). How to Cure the Cheating Problem.BizEd. Young, 2012
