e-Assessment in Higher Education (EASiHE)

Date:

2008-2011

Themes:

Assessment, Technology Enhanced Learning, Accessible Technologies

Funding:

JISC

A number of technical and policy issues are of concern within the University around e-assessment, including:

• an increasing need for interoperability;
• migration from legacy systems;
• quality assurance through item and test statistics;
• AER (additional educational requirements) and accessibility issues;
• provision of mathematical notation in science and engineering questions; and, most importantly,
• student and staff engagement with the relevant technologies (such as Web 2.0 and mobile devices) and services.

The University has received funding to accelerate the process of both implementing an open source, service based solution to institutional e-assessment and addressing institutional change by engaging academics and students in co-design and co-deployment. In line with the recently introduced University e-Learning Enhancement Strategy, which places the quality of student learning as its first objective, the EASiHE project intends to provide an open source solution for formative assessment by integrating services currently available within the JISC eFramework.

The project will:

• take the JISC-funded ‘EdSpace’ repository and elements of the ‘Faroes’ project to provide ‘Web 2.0’ content and services to users;
• incorporate the IMS Question and Test interoperability standard by integrating the ‘AsDel’ assessment delivery engine, integrating the ‘MathQTI’ standard, and providing QTI migration services sourced from the ‘MCQFM’ project;
• ensure the system is informed by the ‘LexDis’ project for accessibility;
• include relevant lessons from the ‘mPLAT’ and ‘Remora’ projects in providing for mobile learning and assessment; and
• incorporate a relatively underutilised and ‘new’ form of assessment, peer assessment, based upon the ‘Peer Pigeon’ project.

The main deliverables include:

• the provision of an open source e-assessment repository;
• services for the contribution and migration of assessment questions, tests, and peer assessments;
• services for the delivery of tests and peer assessments;
• documentation supporting the pedagogical design of e-assessments at higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy; and
• dissemination material for the wider sector dealing with institutional change using the processes of co-design and co-deployment.

As partners in the JISC Institutional Innovation Support Project, EASiHE will be actively involved in producing briefing materials and training activities for exemplary practice.

Primary investigators

• Gary Wills
• Dr Bill Warburton, iSolutions
• Lester Gilbert

Secondary investigator

• pz2g12

Associated research group

• Electronic and Software Systems