Digital Assessment SIG: our first blog!

Hi there everyone, welcome to ALT Digital Assessment (SIG)’s first blog post! Our group is dedicated to exploring and advancing digital assessment practices across various higher educational institutions in the UK.

We formed our group in September 2024, driven by a shared interest in digital assessment. We come from a diverse background of roles in higher education including academics, researchers, learning technologists, department heads and managers. After discussing and selecting various topics in digital assessment, we have decided to begin with the following areas.

Topics of interest

• Digital Assessment technologies
  • ALT’s community of edtech professionals possess a wealth of information on piloting various digital assessment tools and platforms. We aim to explore these initiatives and understand the reasons behind their implementation and provide updates on their progress and outcomes
• Student engagement
  • Making assessment fun! Inviting speakers to our webinars to share best practice on what works for a better digital assessment experience for students.Including student voice in our webinars.
• Accessibility in assessment
  • Leveraging technology to enhance accessibility. Develop assessment design and implementation guidelines to ensure assessments are inclusive and accessible. Provide context to all learners.
• Digital exams vs paper scanning
  • This topic is still relevant although digital assessment has been around for more than two decades! A significant number of exams in the UK HE sector are still conducted on paper. We want to explore this area and understand reasons for and against moving to digital.
• Authentic assessment, Assessment design/redesign, Formative assessment
  • We hope to survey the landscape of prevailing digital assessment design, methods and practices and share our findings.
• Proctoring versus Exam redesign
  • An important decision to make. What can we do to help make it?
• Digital assessment for UG vs PG
• Application and Challenges of AI
  • Making the most of GenAI in assessment.

Events: We are planning to host a digital assessment event around one or more topics above every three months.

First event: Registration is open for our online event on January 21 2025 on Generative AI and Digital Assessments.

For further information including our members and how to subscribe to our mailing list please visit our group’s main page.