Is digital assessment interesting for your course?

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To assess or not to assess digital - that is the question

There are several steps in an assessment process that can be digital. Is any of them interesting for your course?
Promotion video " Digitaal toetsen" produced by the UvA (in Dutch).
If the video is not visible, please choose the link: UvA promotievideo


The UvA has three digital assessment rooms, two at AMC location (IWO tentamenzalen (location, Meibergdreef 29, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, image here below: IWO-zaal Rood) and one at Roeterseiland location (REC, M3.01).
IWO is an acronym that has nothing to do with digital assessment. It is the name of the building and it means "Instituut Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek".

Consider the following 10 issues when assessment is taken with pen and paper for yourself. Do you recognize one of more of these situations?

1. Alignment learning process - assessment
   e.g. in the case that the use of computer applications is an integral part of learning activities during the course it is not natural to assess (only) with pen and paper.
2. The course is being (re-)designed.
3. Students have heterogeneous backgrounds and (some of them) have gaps in required pre-knowledge.
4. Not enough insight in student(s) (own) learning progress during the course.
5. In your opinion students need to practice during your course to be able to pass the exam but they don't do this (enough).
6. Designing all the time original (new) high quality questions for final assessments takes a lot of time
7. Low overview of used exam questions and difficult exchange of assessment material between the lecturers in one course or when the staff of the course changes
8. Paper logistics: print large amount of assessments, bring them to the exam room and distribute to each student and after the assessment collecting it back again and administrating this all.
9. Correction of exams
   1. large group of students, a lot of correction work
   2. difficult reading of handwriting of students
   3. logistics issues of distribution of exams between lecturers to correct one exam
   4. delays in having correction work finished
   5. mistakes in adding up points in assessments
   6. summarizing results in tables to submit to SIS, Blackboard
   7. communication of the results to students(transparency)
10. Low insight in long term quality analysis of the assessment and assessment questions

If you recognize one or more issues in your own teaching practice that are important for you, you should consider to design digital assessments. Please contact Natasa Brouwer (natasa.brouwer@uva.nl) (for the FNWI lecturers) if you would like to digitize the assessments in your course. You will get more information and the support needed from the FNWI support team.
Download to print your Check list Digital Exam.

If you have questions that might be interesting also for other users please use the button: Ask a question in Starfish. Join the FNWI Assessment community - Plaza Digital assessment - to receive information about meetings and events about digital assessment also per e-mail.

Find on this page in See also several Good practices of the Science faculty lecturers about digital assessment and get inspired.

See the UvA knowledge and policy site about (digital) assessment: http://toetsing.uva.nl/

Original author: Natasa Brouwer

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