The role of assessment

From Stellar Deliverable 1.1

"Massively researched and comprehensively analysed, two results in this area seem incontestable: (a) educational systems are driven by assessment systems and (b) many current approaches to assessment seem at least as likely to inhibit as promote learning. Assessment and target setting are not going to go away. How best to use assessment to promote learning? The research and professional community owes the political community more than criticism here". (Coffield, 2006, p 6).

Be it by the teacher, the trainer or the learner him or herself, there is a constant need for verifying and ensuring that the learning process evolves well and in a direction which corresponds to the intended learning outcomes. It may be the case that such outcomes do not have the same meaning for all the protagonists, and are ill defined, but they will always have a structural role in (intentional) learning situations. For these reasons assessing and tracking learning processes are crucially important. Orchestration must take this constraint into account, being able to make sense of what is happening in order to evolve in a way which effectively supports learning, and beyond that providing the means to certify the knowledge, skills or competences of individuals.

Assessment can be formative or summative, and can include self-assessment and assessment of learning outcomes. In this process, technology can help by providing information to both the teacher and the learner. Further, for both teachers and students, assessment is able to help identify 'gaps' in students’ knowledge. For individual students, assessment provides a well-understood way of talking about their achievements, and it is often in referring to the results of assessment (e.g. a PhD degree) that students begin to build their reputation. Assessment is also useful to those outside the particular teaching and learning situation in that it provides a means of 'filtering' for potential employees, and for acceptance on a higher degree course. For example, an employee may decide only to employ learners who graduated with an A-grade in mathematics, and a university may only allow students with first class degrees to enrol in a Master's course.

Technology, because of its capacity to record, represent, store and treat the trace of learning activities could provide efficient and reliable tools and means for teachers, trainers and learners to assess learning. Further new technologies may provide a broader basis for assessment than has previously been possible because a range of media could be used to provide evidence of learning. In this way, technology can be seen as 'liberating' assessment.

The idea of ‘oeuvre’, discussed in the previous section, could also be used as a learning asset that forms the basis of an assessment process, becoming part of a learning ‘portfolio’. However there are some problems associated with using digital ‘oeuvre’. Plagiarism has become a problem, largely because so much information is freely available on electronic media such as the Internet and CD-ROMs and because it is very easy for students (learners) to copy and paste information directly from these sources into their own documents. Trust is a key issue for new forms of technology-driven assessment. For example, the Open University in the UK requires students to appear in person at given physical locations to carry out examinations even though the courses are mostly 'delivered' online, and online assessment might seem to be an obvious choice. It may be necessary to find ways in which students can defend their work (oeuvre) in an oral examination as is currently the case in PhD examinations. Observation and control of activities and situations can be seen to relate to formative assessment. Indicators that are relevant for the supervisor (tutor) and that allow multiple and complementary views of the learners provide useful tools for learners (and tutors) to reorganise objectives or tasks without compromising the consistency of the scenario.

Research questions include:

• How can we best articulate TEL approaches in the classroom with effective assessment processes?

• In which ways can we provide students with sufficient opportunities to defend their work in order to overcome issues of plagiarism?

• Developments in digital technology could be seen to favour ‘centralised’ and ‘de-personalised’ modes of assessment such as multiple choice tests. What are the implications for education?

• What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of technology assisted assessment?

• What do we know about mechanisms for dynamic re-orchestration of learning situations by the tutor and the learner, and how can we extend this work?

• What new forms of assessment are made available by digital technologies, for example learning traces?