“ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING: WHERE ARE WE ON THE DIGITAL ASSESSMENT SPECTRUM?“
by Professor Denise Whitelock, B.Sc. M.Ed Ph.D, Professor of Technology Enhanced Assessment and Learning, Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University, UK
The PowerPoint presentation is available here.
Abstract
Digital assessment is an evolving construct used in education to enrich, inform and complement the teaching process. Using automatic feedback however has been under-utilised and under-valued throughout the assessment process. This presentation will take you through a number of projects which have automated some aspects of assessment.
Those selected from my own research have a strong conceptual underpinning, for instance Dweck’s work to develop Open Comment which provided feedback to Arts students. With Open Mentor, I used Bale’s work on interactive categories to help tutors develop effective and supportive feedback. SafeSea, on the other hand, allows students to trial essay writing before taking the sometimes daunting step of submitting their first essay, using analysis based on Pask’s conversational framework.
This presentation will discuss the issues raised by teachers and students in this arena. It will provide examples of how their concerns are currently being addressed by both researchers and software developers in order to support educator feedback to students. Finally, the issue of potential disruptors will be raised which moves us into the realm of crystal ball gazing.
Biography
Professor Denise Whitelock has over twenty years experience in designing, researching and evaluating online and computer-based learning in Higher Education. She is a Professor of Technology Enhanced Assessment and Learning in the Open University’s Institute of Educational Technology. She is currently leading the UK’s contribution to the Adaptive Trust e-Assessment System for Learning (TeSLA) http://tesla-project.eu/project. She has just completed directing the CODUR http://in3.uoc.edu/opencms_in3/opencms/webs/projectes/codur/en/index.html and SAFeSEA http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/safesea/ projects. The aim of this latter research was to provide an effective automated interactive feedback system that yields an acceptable level of support for university students writing essays in a distance or e-learning context. Her work has received international recognition as she holds visiting chairs at the Autonoma University, Barcelona and the British University in Dubai.