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Past, Present and Future of e-Assessment: Towards a Flexible e-Assessment System

Past, Present and Future of e-Assessment: Towards a Flexible e-Assessment System. Mohammad AL-Smadi, Christian Gütl Institute for Information Systems and New Media (IICM) Graz University of Technology, Austria msmadi;cguetl@iicm.edu. Outline. Motivations An Introduction to e-Assessment.

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Past, Present and Future of e-Assessment: Towards a Flexible e-Assessment System

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  1. Past, Present and Future of e-Assessment: Towards a Flexible e-Assessment System Mohammad AL-Smadi, Christian Gütl Institute for Information Systems and New Media (IICM) Graz University of Technology, Austria msmadi;cguetl@iicm.edu

  2. Outline • Motivations • An Introduction to e-Assessment. • Overview about e-Assessment History. • e-Assessment Challenges and Difficulties. • A Proposal for an Enhanced e-Assessment System. • Conclusions. • Outlook. ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  3. Background & Motivations 1 • Gütl WG: Technology-Enhanced Learning • Skill & Competence-based Learning • Skill detection/assignment (Nussbaumer et al., 2007) • Content-based: knowledge and action component • Social metadata creation (Web 2.0 technologies) • User behavior (attention metadata) • E-assessment (Gütl, 2007) • Automatic knowledge & skill assessment and feedback provision • Content-based: statistical & NLP • Different types of Assessment • Skill-based adaptive e-learning (Nussbaumer et al., 2007b) • Learning content • Learning path • Assessment ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  4. Background & Motivations 2 • The increase in the staff workload: • Increasing number of students supervised by the same staff. • Reducing time and effort. • Appropriate assessment information and effective decisions.(Dietal et al, 1991). • The increase of pressure to provide assessments that are fair, reliable and effective. (Brown et al, 1996) ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  5. e-Assessment Strategies and Types • Assessment strategies (Bransford et al, 2000): • Formative Assessment: • Part of the learning process, feedback provision. • Summative Assessment: • At the end of a learning activity, judging and discriminating between students. • E-Assessment types (Charman & Elms, 1998): • Computer Based Assessment: • Test delivery and feedback provision are done by the computer. • Computer Assisted Assessment: • More general, the whole assessment process involving test delivery, test marking, grading, analysis, reporting and feedback provision are handled by the computer ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  6. Historical Overview of e-Assessment 1 • 1960’s when: • PLATO • (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) project has been started at the University of Illinois. • TICCIT • (Time-Shared, Interactive, Computer-Controlled, Information Television),which has been started in 1967. • The “Automatic Grader” (Hollingsworth,1960). • The use of computers to automatically assess the students’ programming assignments . • 1980’s and the effect of micro-computers (Reiser,2001): • An increasing interest of using computers in instruction. • Assessment Systems in other fields appeared after soon: • Mathematics (Rottmann &Hudson,1983) • Chemistry (Myers,1986). ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  7. Historical Overview of e-Assessment 2 • Since 1990’s and afterwards, the impact of the World Wide Web (WWW). • Blackboard.com • provides automatic grading of multiple choice and True/False questions. • Systems such as QUIZIT (Tinoco et al,1997) , WebCT.com , ASSYST (Jackson &Usher,1997) and PILOT (Bridgeman et al, 2000) are also examples of web-based systems with ability of online testing and grading. • e-Examiner (Guetl, 2007): • A tool to support the assessment process by automatically generating test items for open-ended responses, marking students’ short free-text answers and providing feedback. ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  8. E-Assessment Challenges in Modern Learning Settings 1 • Digital Mimes • Imitating the conventional assessment. • limitation in exercises types. (Elliot, 2008) • Assuming that the students have to retain the context related information in their memories. • To overcome this problem: • Open-web examinations (Ridgway et al, 2004). • Modernizing e-assessment systems to be influenced by the abilities of Web 2.0 (Elliot, 2008). ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  9. E-Assessment Challenges in Modern Learning Settings 2 • Mentality Change & Culture Evolution: (Prensky, 2001) • Our educational systems: • The rapid change in our culture • The use of technology in our modern life activities. • Multi-tasked students & Outdated educational systems: • Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. • The gap between students and our educational systems. • To overcome this problem: • Teachers have to learn the new language and style of their students. • Content should be changed. • New methods of learning like Game-based learning should be used. ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  10. E-Assessment Challenges in Modern Learning Settings 3 • Security & Privacy: • Preventing Cheating • Several solutions (Barker & Lee, 2007): • The simplest and cheapest of using passwords • The more complex and expensive techniques of adding physical instruments to the assessment system such as, Biometric authentication and using video conferencing setups. • Maintaining users’ privacy: • Protect specific users’ data not to be accessed by other users. • Providing adequate information of students’ performance to teachers while keeping specific details secret. ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  11. E-Assessment Challenges in Modern Learning Settings 4 • Assessment & Feedback as a Mean to Learn: • Encourage students to further progress and learn. (Dochy & McDowell, 1997): • Portfolio-assessment, self-assessment and peer-assessment. • Feedback as a mean to learn (Klassen, 2001): • Spirit of formative assessments . • Achieving objectives. • A mirror for learning. • Technology has a major influence on feedback: • Computers can (Charman & Elms, 1998): • Facilitate tracking user’s behavior. • Provide immediate or timely feedback. ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  12. E-Assessment Challenges in Modern Learning Settings 5 • Standards & Specifications: • Why Standards? • Interoperability. • Reusability. • Manageability. • Accessibility. • Durability. • Many organizations and consortia: • Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DC). • The Institute of Educational and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). • The Instructional Management System Global Learning Consortium (IMS GLC). • The Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (ADL). • E-assessment systems should be designed to be flexible and support most of these standards. ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  13. E-Assessment Challenges in Modern Learning Settings 6 • E-assessment Automation: • Most of the developed e-assessment tools are related to specific part(s) of the assessment cycle or limited to some type(s) of assessment. • e-assessment tools should: • Support the entire lifecycle of assessment by (semi-) automatic methods. • Be designed based on the learning goals. ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  14. Overall Conceptual Architecture ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  15. Conclusions 1 • Reducing time and efforts spent on students’ assessment is a rationale to use e-assessment technology. • There is an increasing pressure on teachers in further and higher education to provide assessments that are fair, reliable, efficient and effective. • Appropriate assessment information provides an accurate measure of student performance that enable students, teachers, administrators and other key stakeholders to make effective decisions. • Because of the gap between the students and the educational systems form one side and the gap between the students and the educators from the other side, the current applied educational systems are not appropriate anymore. ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  16. Conclusions 2 • Assessment is not only used for measuring and judging students work. Furthermore it is a mean for learning, where different types of assessment such as self and peer assessment can be used. • Feedback has been considered to be a mirror for learning where both students and educators can use this mirror to see what they have done or have not during courses. • The more standards the e-assessment system supports the more flexible it would be. • E-assessment tools should support the entire lifecycle of assessment by (semi-) automatic methods. • Based on this review, we have introduced an abstract level for a flexible e-assessment system . ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  17. Outlook • Based on the first conceptual architecture, we will start an in-deep requirements analysis and will start the first phase of a prototype implementation. ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

  18. Thank You for Your Attention!Questions are Welcome. Mohammad AL-Smadi, Christian Gütl Institute for Information Systems and New Media (IICM) Graz University of Technology, Austria msmadi;cguetl@iicm.edu ICL2008 Conference: 24-26 Sep. Villach-Austria.

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