Online Assessment

I believe may people have had many chance to experience the online assessment now a days. My response to online assessment is that the online assessment is a tool to make students and learners more convenience in the testing, learning, and teaching process. I think teachers take more advantages from the online assessment than student. Through using the online assessment tool, teacher not only will save time and effort (CAA, Computer Adaptive Assessment) but also collect more valuable information to assess other aspects of the student to enhance teaching. I have done tons of online test and WebCT test in my post-secondary education. The best advantages to me was I will less likely to have an exam crash with other exam; at least exams won't crash in the same 24 hr period. In addition, I could have the exam result back faster and have information of how well the is class doing in the exam by reviewing the accurate statistical data, such as class average, standard distribution, and class low/high marks. This is the best part I like the WebCT version of the exam. Besides the advantages and benefits of the online assessment, I have a concern about the online assessment that did not appear in the reading of module 6. From my practical view, the content integrity of the online assessment, the exam content might be compromised by those who took the online exam early than the others. This is the growing concern I have found that escalating among some management faculties. This issue might cause the teacher to set random multiple choice questions on the exam. Unfortunately, inequality issue is raised since random multiple choice in the online assessment will lead to deviations of difficulties between different student's exams.

 

Reference

Melissa R Olt. (2002). 'Ethics and Distance Education: Strategies for Minimizing Academic Dishonesty in Online Assessment', Capella University. http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall53/olt53.html . Accessed 10/26/2007