It's time e-assessment grew up

When I had the opportunity to speak to another group of University senior staff last week, I heard another set of stories about how they had been let down by technology that claimed to be able to support rigorous assessment, yet when it was used it either proved to be too inflexible or provided the student with too much control.


It is not a surprise that this was their experience given that an organisation like JISC on the one hand acknowledge that for ‘for technology-enhanced assessment to be effective, pedagogically sound developments need to be supported by robust and appropriate technology’ ‘(Effective assessment in a digital age; JISC) yet at the same time they ‘showcase’ an e-portfolio that proudly claims that it provides ‘a Personal Learning Space owned and controlled by the user.’

How can these two statements co-exist together? If learners own and control their learning space this surely means they can chose what external feedback can be included in their portfolio and what can be discarded. It might also mean they can make their own assessments? Of course it is good practice that they self-assess their work but an external person must have the final say.

A strong pedagogy is clearly based on the notion that through it learners will gain skills and knowledge, however for quality assurance of that process to be credible it is important that all comments are captured good and bad. Indeed when I act as an Internal Verifier I state my expectation that I will see assessors deferring evidence because that is one indicator of effective assessment taking place. Furthermore electronic assessment makes it very easy to see that this behaviour is in place.

It is important that a student feels strong ownership of their portfolio but that ownership needs to extend to including comments on their work from external people whether they be good and bad and furthermore the learning institution has to be totally assured these comments are captured. E-assessment systems need to be sophisticated enough to provide this quality assurance.

E-portfolios; Reaching the Tipping Point?

I was at a Sixth Form College recently presenting our e-portfolio for NVQ assessment and was greeted by the college’s Head of Technical Support, who delighted in telling me that e-portfolios were meant to be the big technological advance of the last decade and this has never materialised. I first asked him whether it was worth my while continuing with the demonstration and then asked him what he meant by an e-portfolio and suggested that the technology that underpinned them, may have advanced over the last decade.


I might also have said that in part I shared his delight to see the ‘old concept’ of what was considered to be an e-portfolio being sufficiently challenged, that it was reaching the tipping point where it was significantly under threat.

This challenge is coming from two sources. One is from the ‘So What’ camp which I have highlighted before. If an e-portfolio is just a collection of artefacts that capture someone’s personal development, with the user being in total control of the data, a) what use it is and b) aren’t there better tools that do this like Facebook and Linked In.

The other source is relatively new but arguably even more significant. Various public bodies, notably JISC have promoted e-portfolios that are developed on open source software. This is fine if these portfolios do not contain confidential data. However if they are being used to support the assessment of competence, where that assessment potentially involves confidential information, there are growing concerns about whether these portfolios are sufficiently secure to hold this sort of data. This challenge cannot be a surprise given the origin of the software.

Our approach is that the correct position of e-portfolios needs to be somewhere in between the ‘two camps’. We believe that it is important that the learner’s feels in control of their data and we take great steps to deliver this, however to be able to support effective assessment there does need to be the ability for assessors to interact with that data in a transparent way. Similarly we also think there are great benefits to be gained from sharing technological developments between our customers, but this has to take place in an environment where the software is secure not open.

As for the demonstration it went ahead and the College is now using the e-portfolio although I remain unconvinced that the lessons from one Department’s hopefully successful implementation will be shared across the College.