Asia Pacific Assessment Conference (APAC) 2011

Keynote Address 1
e-Assessment in High Stakes Examinations - Simon Lebus

e-educational Context
"21st century schooling for 21st century skills"

• Virtual faculty, campus, dispersed student community e.g. Virtual High School, Florida Virtual School, Rocket Ship Hybrid School Model, iLearn NYC
• Project- & collaborative-learning based curricula
• Greater subject variety and increase in multi-disciplinary and thematic studies e.g. giving opportunities for global perspective
• All supported by - content embedded formative assessment; multiple observations of data collected through classroom; assessment and other data sources yielding more precise performance and accountability monitoring, improved teacher and learner feedback, more refined assessment tools
  

e-assessment is already widely used in professional and practical certification ... take up in education is still low.

Multiple benefits:

• Access
• Rapid turnaround of results
• More authentic and engaging item typers
• Improved security

Obstacles:

• move from lock-down test centre model to fully internet-enabled using students; own laptops
• resilience and capacity
• cost
• item types and question paper design
• individual subject suitability, short vs long answers
• risk aversion, doing better with a pen in the hand than a keyboard
• social attitudes - fairness: gathered field, comparability across subjects, student capability (not assessing students' ICT skills)
• "The introduction of computers into some complex human activities may constitute an irreversible commitment" - Joseph Weizenbaum
• "Satnav assessment" for "Satnav learning"

Slow migration to e-assessment in high stakes examinations

• respect social and educational concerns
• identify which assessment functions are best served by what types of e-assessment
• be clear that our aim is educational enhancement not economy
• only switch where high stake e-assessment is more effective than pen and paper
  

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” — Albert Einstein