Digitizing but Diversifying Assessment Formats [7003] Home : Annual Conference 2017

Public Group Active 5 years, 4 months ago

Thu, Sep 7 2017, 10:45am – 12:00pm

Authors: Sofie Emmertsen

Room: Elizabeth Gidney II (2)

Theme: Learning Spaces

Type: 20-minute session

Description

The Faculty of Mathematics and Science at the University of Bergen is working towards digitizing all final exams by the end of 2017. While this goal may be met by using multiple choice assessment tests, developments in digital assessment technology opens up a diversity of assessment formats employing new technology. This presentation evaluates some of the opportunities and tensions in developing digitized assessment formats and illustrates these by considering the experiences of the Faculty as it rethinks, implements and evaluates new assessment forms to improve students’ learning outcomes

Over the past 5 years, Scandinavia has seen a general transformation from paper based to digital exams across all of Higher Education. The larger, high ranked universities in Norway are now pursuing 100% digitization of all exams before 2020. The digital exams initiative came from various groups. Governments were pushing to boost students’ digital skills, institutions wished to reduce costs on paper handling and administrative work hours, and students were finding pen and paper exams outdated and restrictive.

However, to academic and faculty management digital exams are an opportunity to revisit assessment formats, learning outcomes and teaching activities. For the Faculty of Math and Science at University of Bergen, digital exams made it possible to assess more directly a range of specific competences such as programming, 3D simulation, use of spreadsheet calculations. However, other competences could no longer be assessed without changing assessment formats. With Biggs’ model of constructive alignment and the SOLO taxonomy for evaluations, the faculty began mapping digital tools, functionalities, assessment formats and learning outcomes to a) point to new assessment formats to be approved by the university and b) make guidelines on which tools to introduce in teaching and learning for each subject discipline, and c) to point to new digital tools and functionality necessary to ensure continued and precise assessment of relevant subject specific competences instead of reverting to simple multiple choice to obtain the goal of 100% digitization. This paper presents some of the main findings of the Faculty’s work and points to some overall conclusions drawn from the past 5 years of digital exams in Scandinavia.

References

Selberg, S., M. S. Andresen, C. Jørgensen, Ø. Ytrehud, K. R. Olsen, M S. Nerheim, B. Gjerdevik. 2016. “Rapport fra arbeidsgruppen for digital undervisning og vurdering ved Det matematisk-naturvitenskapelige fakultet”. University of Bergen.

Biggs, John: Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment. Higher Education 32: 347-

364, 1996. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Biggs, John og Collis, Kevin (1982) Evaluating the Quality of Learning: the SOLO taxonomy.

New York: Academic Press.

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