4644
e-Assessment
Feature
Pass with
E
xams are big news. The emotive
subject of academic and vocational
careers swallows up column inches
with so-called incompetence scandals,
testing concerns, cheating and budget
flying colours
worries. Whether human error has led
to answers being printed on the back of
an exam paper, or questions have been
leaked in advance, problems persist in
and out of the exam hall. Concerns also
extend to students’ mental welfare and
questions arise: Does too much testing lead
Learning success has been proven to
to unnecessary anxiety? Do we need all
this testing? Are too many hours wasted in
be heightened with the use of electronic
the classroom teaching pupils how to pass
tests? Are we missing the opportunity to
examinations. Geoff Chapman explains
give learners as broad and rich a learning
experience as possible because of a fixation
why e-assessments, as an alternative
with traditional testing?
testing method, could be the answer to
These are some of the questions that can
be addressed with e-assessment – a means
all our exam quandaries
of testing that is utilised in the professional
spheres of medicine, construction, law,
accountancy and IT, but the uptake from
educationalists has lagged behind. One
common misconception is that e-assessment
will lead to the dumbing down of exams.
This is simply not true. E-assessment
is a sophisticated and ever-expanding
assessment process which has proved
successful over the past two deacdes in the
professional sectors and should be seen
as a credible contemporary alternative to
traditional education testing methods.
Electronically tested
E-assessment allows candidates to take
tests, which are sourced by an awarding
body or educational organisation and
developed into robust examinations by
testing experts, just like traditional pen and
paper tests. Each test taken is synchronised
from huge banks of questions, offering
a far greater variety of questions and
making it impossible for candidates to
copy one another. They can be taken when
the candidate is ready to test, and not
necessarily at a prescribed time.
Through more traditional testing methods,
only a snapshot of ability can be assessed
if tests are held after a two-year period,
leading to being ‘drilled’ to pass the exams,
which is not a fair reflection of their true
ability. Further still, due to the intensity
of the ‘cramming’ exam process, this has
resulted in the spate of blunders in
learningmagazine.co.uk

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