The classical test on paper is already often being replaced by digital assessments with rich questions, adaptive questions and open-ended questions. On Tuesday, 19 April 2016, SURFacademy organised a seminar where Digital Assessment Innovation Scheme project managers shared their experiences in developing forms of digital testing and learning.
Mary Dankbaar: ‘Digital assessment has added value!’
The seminar started with Erasmus MC’s Mary Dankbaar. She feels that digital assessment has added value primarily because more diversity is possible in the types of questions, more realistic test situations are possible, and there is the option of frequent self-testing and feedback. At Erasmus MC, some of the resources being currently used are virtual patient cases, clinical challenges and serious gaming.
Kris van Klaveren: ‘Learning analytics can be very misleading.’
Following Mary Dankbaar, Kris van Klaveren of the VU University Amsterdam spoke about learning analytics. He presented various studies in this area. His conclusion was that learning analytics can be very misleading, because it is easy to misinterpret the relationships: if there is correlation, is there a causal link?
Testing and feedback session
Three short presentations were given in the testing and feedback session: a presentation on peer group feedback, a presentation on standard individual arrangements for formative feedback, and a presentation on the Ispot tool.
Experiment with peer group feedback
TU Twente is currently involved in a small pilot related to giving peer group feedback. In the experience of both students and lecturers, peer review doesn’t work well where a student only gives feedback regarding another student. They were not enthusiastic about the quality of the feedback. Because lecturers noticed that students enjoyed consulting with each other on assignments, they came up with the idea of trying peer group feedback. They wanted to use an effective tool for this. After looking at many existing tools, they concluded that there was no existing tool that met all their criteria. Their conclusion was then to build their own tool. Since this is very expensive, they approached computer science students and now a group of five students is working on development of the tool.
Esther Arrindel: ‘I’m happy to give feedback, but is there a more efficient way of doing this?’
Esther Arrindel of the Windesheim University of Applied Sciences is a lecturer in the teacher training programme. She enjoys giving feedback, but feels that it is too time-consuming. This is the reason she is looking for a more efficient way to do this - a way that is generic, but at the same time feels like a personalised approach for the student.
She is currently experimenting with using Turnitin for evaluating papers. This allows the user to save feedback given as separate comments. Subsequently, in the next paper you can easily insert these comments. While this has potential, she feels it isn’t quite the solution she needs. She notices that she has such a large amount of comments in Turnitin that it remains time-consuming to find the correct comment.
Ispot: practicing conversation skills for psychology
The final presentation was from Mark Hommes, a psychologist and lecturer at the Open Universiteit. He presented Ispot, a tool they are currently using in a pilot. This is an interactive self-observation and peer observation tool where students can practice their conversation skills at home before they attend a practical training. In the tool, the student is first given a client's description. This is followed by a video where the client speaks to the student. Following this, the students can record their response using their webcam. They can replay this recording and compare it to good and bad examples. If they are satisfied with their recording, they can share it with other students and the lecturer. They can subsequently give feedback in the form of a video.
Afterwards, good recordings as well as less successful recordings are viewed during the practical training.
The pilot is still running, but the initial reactions are positive. When the time comes to go to the practical training, students have more skills when they’ve made use of Ispot than when they haven’t. Because students enjoy the fact that recordings are used, they are more motivated to perform better.
Would you like to know more?
The slides and recordings of the presentations will be made available on the SURF web page this week.