Digital Assessment

Digital assessment is the online submission of work by students, which is subsequently assessed by teaching staff with opportunities for formal feedback. Bennett (2002: 14) argued that the 'incorporation of technology into assessment is inevitable'. Assessment provides a way for measuring understanding or attainment against learning outcomes, offering a way for both lecturers and students to judge performance. This makes assessment distinctive from student work. (Based on: https://elearningyork.wordpress.com/learning-design-and-development/technology-enhanced-learning-handbook/york-tel-handbook-6-assessment-and-feedback/6-1-digital-assessment/ ).

Online assessment has digital approaches as core components of formal submission, marking, feedback or assignment-handling processes.

Fig. 1. Assessment-feedback cycle. Picture from: https://elearningyork.wordpress.com/learning-design-and-development/technology-enhanced-learning-handbook/york-tel-handbook-6-assessment-and-feedback/6-1-digital-assessment/

Benefits of digital assessment

Below is given a list of the potential benefits that digital assessment could offer for evaluation processes, which is common and distinguished from many sources (JISC 2010; Pellegrino & Quellmalz 2010; Winkley 2010; Schwartz and Arena 2009; Angus and Watson, 2009; Whitelock and Watt, 2008; Whitelock et al., 2006). The assessment process using digital technologies was evaluated and seen as follows:

• Provide immediate feedback – can give a quick response. It is possible to provide real-time feedback that quickly diagnoses (e.g., multiple choice questions in a lecture) and gives more opportunities for responding to different audiences (teachers, peers, etc.). It can also help to create new forms of dialogue between teacher and learner, to improve assessment practices and increase learners’ participation.
• Potentially increase learners' autonomy, agency and self-regulation – support for more individual answers. Can also facilitate self-regulated learning through multiple sets of evidence, immediately generating feedback, better monitoring progress towards learning outcomes and reflection on what was achieved. Data visualization is especially important here.
• Support for collaborative learning – offers opportunities for peer review, observation and monitoring of knowledge, sharing activities, joint assessment and social interaction.
• Provide authenticity – can present challenging problems and approaches of assessing complex skills, such as problem solving, decision making and hypothesis testing, which would be authentic for future work experience and what skills and knowledge will be needed after formal education.
• Widen range of measurement – through the ability to design and visualize complex data and their models that take into account several factors, digital technologies can provoke and measure multiple skills, knowledge and cognitive skills that have been difficult to assess before. Let’s say simulations could simultaneously assess technical computer skills, decision-making and strategy processes, as well as specific subject skills.
• Flexible and appropriate responses – can offer a choice in approach, time and form of assessment of students, who can get an assessment at a selected time and place, without any time or space restrictions. In addition, digital tools such as simulation provide many ways and can offer more affordable assessment than text based tests for students with different learning styles or languages. Regular feedback can also encourage students to feel less anonymous and more personally associate with their learning courses, especially in higher education. These options can also challenge traditional evaluation methods and requires a revision of the old practices.
• Increase efficiency and reduce teachers' workloads – potentially improves data management efficiency such as marking, managing and storing information, helping teachers to use better their resources and offers more environmentally and friendly management of assessment.
• Improve student performance - it is important to note that e-feedback can improve student performance and show the other benefits such as better student participation (see Whitelock and Watt, 2008, Angus and Watson, 2009).
• Integrate formative and summative assessments – summative assessment is often retrospective, as it test knowledges, they have previously acquired, without opportunities for ongoing learning. Digital technologies can integrate assessment and training together to the learning environment or programs that track how students solve problems on computer issues and gives direct feedback.
• Improve assessment validity and reliability – it is possible to help to monitor the validity of the assessment (if the activity is the right tool to measure skills and understanding) using media rather than just text. It also provides better reliability of scores and reliable data sets for deeper analysis.

Challenges/barriers to digital assessment

Below is given a list of the potential challenges and barriers specific to digital assessment, which is common and distinguished from many sources (combined and distinguished from Mogey, 2011; Mansell, 2009; Whitelock and Watt, 2008; Ripley, 2007; Whitelock et al, 2006; Whitelock and Brasher, 2006):

• Practitioners' concerns about the problem of plagiarism;
  
• Difficulties in scalability and transferability of practices, especially in HE, where different departments often have independent, separate work practices and cultures;
  
• Concerns over reliability and validity of high-stakes assessment (All students should receive equivalent tests);
  
• User authentication and security;
  
• Lack of staffing time and training in order to review the evaluation strategies and how to use technologies;
  
• Investment costs. New technologies require significant investment in training processes and support. In addition, certain tools require high investment and infrastructure that many institutions do not want to prioritize (for example, having enough computers to conduct screening tests);
• Exam boards are highly concerned with ensuring standards are not affected;
• Lack of political leadership and the whole system;
• Limitations to the exam system;
• Lack of suitable spaces for advanced technologies that are not designed to meet the needs and objectives of technology enhanced assessment.

Embedding digital assessment in module sites

The process of assessment submission is similar to online activity design. You will need to provide:

• An outline of the assessment task, the pedagogical rationale linking to module outcomes and specify components of the assessment.
• Process-related instructions for submission, including deadline and where to find the submission point.
• Technical guidance for correct formatting, how to use a specific tool and how to submit.

(Based on: https://elearningyork.wordpress.com/learning-design-and-development/technology-enhanced-learning-handbook/york-tel-handbook-6-assessment-and-feedback/6-1-digital-assessment/)