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What You Need to Know About e-Assessment

With 1EdTech’s recent announcement of the upcoming e-assessment interoperability challenge we thought it would be a good time to discuss electronic assessment. Here is a Q&A with Rob Abel of 1EdTech. Feel free to post additional questions and Rob will answer them (if he can)!

Q1: Is it time for electronic assessment in education?

A1: Yes, paper tests are more difficult to administer, take longer to process, are more prone to error and are not able to provide timely data to help improve instruction. Compared to a situation where paper textbooks may still have some usability advantages over digital e-books, paper assessments have no advantage at all over e-assessment.

Q2: Can e-assessment be used for summative or formative testing?

A2: Both.  E-assessment can be used for pure “high stakes test taking” scenarios as well as intermingled throughout other learning activities for formative assessment.

Q3: Is interoperability of assessment items important?

A3: Yes - very. In general digital assessment enables new forms of collaboration. For instance, in various countries around the world there is a desire to enable school organizations to collaborate on item development – since many schools are testing on the same subjects. Standard formats for assessment items enables collaboration on/exchange of items without every organization needing to use the same software platform for item creation and/or delivery. It is becoming pretty clear with historic collaborations such as the U.S. states on the Race to the Top Assessment initiative that the era of the “single delivery platform that outputs pdf” is coming to an end. With interoperability of assessment items enabled by standards there is no reason to be locked into a single vendor solution. Across the assessment community replication of effort goes down, investment in proprietary solutions ends and more investment is focused on innovation.

Q4: Does 1EdTech have standards and a community focused on assessment interoperability?

A4: Yes.  1EdTech has two related standards that the assessment community worldwide should be making use of. The first is QTI (Question and Test Interoperability) and the second is APIP (Accessible Portable Item Protocol). QTI enables interoperability of assessment items and tests. The latest version is v2.1 which is the one that the assessment community is rallying around. A subset (profile) of an older version of QTI, v1.2, is used in Common Cartridge, which is a format for importing and exporting content into/out of learning platforms. APIP adds accessibility constructs to QTI to enable electronic delivery of a variety of accessible assessments.

Q5: What about other types of interoperability that might enable more effective use of e-assessment?

A5: Yes. There is a very compelling need to use interoperability standards to enable assessment software platforms to “plug into” or connect with other software systems. So, this is the “assessment software product” as an LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) tool provider, enabling the assessment platform to be seamlessly “launched” from a host system (like a learning management system). This type of “plugging in” can be useful in both formative and summative scenarios (depending on how the later is administered). We see at least four types of assessment products beyond the state level large-scale assessment that will benefit from this type of interoperability:

  • Standard quizzing/test authoring and delivery software that are typically used already with learning platforms
  • The increasingly popular “homework applications” or “adaptive tutoring applications” can be also be viewed as formative assessment platforms.
  • Classroom test creation and scoring systems – yes, including those using paper and pencil
  • Assessment tools used for competency-based degree programs, such as those used by Western Governors University.

Q6: What about interoperability of assessment data?

A6: This of course is also very important. QTI describes formats for item data – which describes how test takers answer questions. The latest 1EdTech work on analytics – the 1EdTech Caliper Learning Analytics Framework (see blog Q&A) - will leverage the QTI data formats as well as other assessment-related formats (e.g. gradebook data). Thus, assessment data can be provided “back” to a learning platform, an assessment delivery platform or to an analytics store.

Q7: What about authentic assessment in the classroom or project-based learning?

A7: Any type of educational assessment, including e-assessment, is just a tool. It is one source of input. In our opinion assessment should be used to improve teaching and to improve learning. Thus, e-assessment plays an important role because it can provide real-time or near real-time feedback in a very transparent way – on a question by question basis (QTI enables such feedback), for computer adaptive testing or simply faster processing of an entire quiz or test. And that feedback can go to teachers, students, parents, etc – whatever makes the most sense. And, initiatives like Race to the Top Assessment are folding teacher evaluation of various “performance events” into the assessment mix. Mobile platforms and interoperable apps could obviously have an very important and innovative role to play in that regard as well as all types of assessment wrapped into apps or otherwise. We’ve already seen some fascinating use of QTI in the mobile setting via the Learning Impact Awards.

Q8: Why has 1EdTech announced a Worldwide Assessment Interoperability Challenge?

A8: Use of interoperability standards such as QTI in the past has been rather flakey in that each supplier implemented different versions and different subsets of functionality. Very few assessment product providers provided feedback to 1EdTech to enable the issues to be resolved.  As a result, interoperability was limited.  Things have turned around radically in the last few years in that 1EdTech now has some 25 or so world-leading providers of assessment products actively involved in implementing QTI and/or APIP. As a result, 1EdTech has been able to finalize these specifications and conformance certification tests that will result in high levels of interoperability. The “challenge” is our way of saying to the world that we have a very strong core set of suppliers who have agreed to achieve conformance certification together over the next few months. Please come and join in for the good of your product development efforts and the good of your customers who desire interoperability that really works.  The extra added “bonus” for participating is entry into the annual 1EdTech Learning Impact Awards under special assessment product categories. Details on the “challenge” are here: http://apip.imsglobal.org/challenge.html

Q9: What if a region of the world wants to work with 1EdTech on a regional profile of QTI or APIP?

A9: Yes, 1EdTech is set up to facilitate that and is in fact in partnership in the Netherlands for the last two years on such an effort regarding national exams.  Feel free to send us an email at assessmentchallenge@imsglobal.org

Q10: What do you see for the future of e-assessment?

A10: We are at the very beginning of a long road ahead filled with many exciting product opportunities.  As with many of the other 1EdTech standards, like Common Cartridge and LTI, we are going to see a very dynamic evolution based on market needs of QTI and APIP. For instance, one of the other application areas we are working on at the moment is QTI application to e-textbooks. E-assessment will permeate every aspect of digital learning materials and activities – with an emphasis on adaptive testing to help pinpoint where additional alternative materials and activities are needed. And, with the undeniable trend toward competency-based learning paths and credentialing the need for better assessment is increasing. As with all of the 1EdTech focus areas the key will be for the technology of assessment to “get out of the way” and be simple and easy to use and benefit from.