Objective testing and computer assisted assessment suggest a monolithic application to summative assessment regimes, but the technologies that now lie behind this form of evaluation can be marshalled to develop highly effective formative assessment methodologies and even guided study in the form of interactive learning activities.
The main difference in the creation of a summative objective test question and a guided study exercise is in the use of comprehensive help and documentation – made available to the learner during the response process – and by the addition of good, relevant, comprehensive feedback material presented to the learner immediately after their response to the stimulus text, image or other media.
Are you involved in the development of interactive learning activities? Would you like to be? What are your experiences of this to date? Do ILAs have a place in your teaching practices?
July 31st, 2011 at 11:02:47
This is definitely the next, logical step for the new technologies we have. A recent publication on assessment design concurs with the melding of testing and learning activities as stated here. “Technology”, it states, “has long been a major force in assessment. The science of measurement took shape at the same time that technologies for standardization were transforming industry. … The most common kinds of assessments in use today are, in many ways, the products of technologies that were once cutting-edge, such as automated scoring and item-bank management”. But this has developed, affirms the chapter on IT and opportunities for advancing educational assessment: “Today, sophisticated information technologies, including an expanding array of computing and telecommunications devices, are making it possible to assess what students are learning at very fine levels of detail, from distant locations, with vivid simulations of real-world situations, and in ways that are barely distinguishable from learning activities”. In the same chapter, the authors reiterate this idea of assessment activities becoming more complex and encouraging learning through their new design as formative activities rather than as summative tests for measurement. “[N]ew information technologies can advance the design of assessments based on a merger of the cognitive and measurement sciences”. I agree with this, but such powerful tools and activities can only be developed if assessments are based on modern knowledge of cognition, are firmly integrated with curriculum and instruction and inform as well as improve student achievement. This can only happen through an important cultural shift and a development of current prevailing teaching practices with comprehensive continuing staff development.
August 8th, 2011 at 12:05:48
I am a Head of Department at the University of Winchester and have been encouraging the development and use of CAA and ILA for the past four years. The next stage in our development is to move from Moodle to ASSET to facilitate our shift of emphasis to formative learning and to sophisticated use of electronic forms of assessment. From our experience to date there is no doubt in my mind that this advanced technology has enormous potential to improve student learning experience. Initial use of ASSET indicates that it has overcome many of the problems presented by Moodle. By being significantly more user friendly it will help overcome colleagues’ resistance to employing new modes of teaching and learning and will save time setting up the sort of innovative and demanding assessments which we have been developing at Winchester. As we move into an era when students will be more demanding as a result of the rise in fees, this new technology will offer the sort of supportive environment which they will increasingly expect.
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