At this stage of recovery, following the pandemic, many Universities are reflecting on their experience of remote learning and remote assessment. The reflection is not always comfortable.

Of course, the pandemic was an emergency, and had Universities been blessed with the time to consider the challenges of online exams and other assessments, we may have seen different outcomes.

Much as the learning delivery, Universities are witnessing or even advocating a return to an “in presence” expectation for assessment. This will mark a return to the benefits of written exams, taken in time-honoured fashion in exam halls, where authenticity, equality of treatment and academic standards can be protected. It will also herald the return of the logistical nightmare of moving mountains of paper between exam halls, administrators, markers and, ultimately, the re-cycling bin…not to mention the risk of RSI claims of students unused to extended periods of handwriting.

The return to “in presence” teaching initiates social benefits for learners. It also allows collaborative learning, discussion and interaction. However, these are the very issues that need to be excluded from most types of assessment. So why should “in presence” teaching necessarily lead to “in presence” assessment?

We spoke with Johan van den Heuvel, an Edtech ambassador with seven years of experience, currently Head of Business at Ans, an innovative, dedicated platform for assessment:

What are the key benefits of a dedicated assessment platform for Business Schools?

The benefits are threefold: Flexibility for Students, Support for Educators and substantial administrative efficiencies.

Can you tell us more about the benefits for students?

Students can access such platforms at any given time and place, from any of their devices. This allows for formative and continuous assessment during a teaching session. In addition, students can easily review their feedback without always scheduling an appointment to do so.

With a dedicated assessment platform, schools also make sure that students with disabilities are not overlooked. For example, students can change the settings of their exam, by using a large font, dyslexia or high contrast mode in a digital test. Educators can give some participants extra time in one click. Grading can be anonymised to avoid human bias.

How are educators supported by such a system?

In many ways. Test and examination questions can be linked clearly to Intended Learning Outcomes. Effective questions can be re-cycled and re-used through an indexing system.  Closed questions can be marked automatically whilst open questions can be easily assessed with a grading scheme. Educators can give feedback by using grading rubrics as well as shortcuts to make it easier and more efficient to grade many students at once.

Educators can use annotations and comment on certain student answers to help grade discursive subjects. Numerical subjects are manageable by using intermediate point allocation to assess parts of an answer, parametrising questions or allowing technical aids for students within the platform. Systems can also cope with paper exams through scanning technology, enabling educators to mark paper exams online.

Technology can be leveraged to reduce workload and to encourage collaboration between educators. With Ans, all assessment processes take place in one platform. When creating questions and later exams, educators can directly communicate with each other in the platform, assign tasks and keep their colleagues updated about the status of different exams. This aids collaboration and exam security in a way that emails do not.

A final benefit for educators and their Schools is that exams within a dedicated system can be customisable and linked seamlessly with existing LMS provision, anti-plagiarism tools and accessibility platforms.

You said that there were substantial administrative efficiencies.  Can you expand on these?

A dedicated assessment platform is meant to decrease educators’ administrative workload through easing the creation of assessments and providing analytics to advise changes to future assessments. Sharing and collaboration is also eased together with the workload and time taken to grade assessments. Team marking and supervision of markers is facilitated, allowing for speedy feedback to learners. Some of our users claim they save half of their time spend on assessments using Ans.

For School administrators, the security of exams and assessments is assured. Physical storage is reduced and workflows more readily monitored.

But are there drawbacks too?

Of course, a dedicated assessment platform requires learners and educators to have a stable internet connection, which, in some areas of the world, can be a challenge.

Another key disadvantage is that introducing a new tool needs onboarding efforts. Educators are not always open to switch to a new platform due to lack of familiarity with it, concerns about its validity and reliability, and the time and effort required to adopt the new technology. What we see from our experience is that an intuitive interface and qualitative Customer Support make the difference at this stage. The learning curve is reduced if the dedicated assessment platform is user-friendly. And by offering comprehensive and accessible training and support resources, the transition to a new platform can be eased so that teaching and learning are minimally impacted.

What we’re doing at Ans is continually implement the users’ feedback in the platform to make it intuitive and simple for new users to onboard. Students also need to adjust to the new assessment platform, but they learn swiftly and are often more comfortable with it. However, they still need adequate support to get used to the new platform.

Business Schools, in particular, have quantitative and qualitative disciplines – how does a dedicated platform cope?

Educators know that not all question types can be asked digitally. For example, when drawing or formulae are needed. Face-to-face assessment is preferred in those cases, so the solution Ans found is offering users the choice of having paper-based exams that can later be scanned and still graded in the dedicated assessment platform. This way, students have the freedom of a paper test, and educators have the benefits of grading in a digital environment. Both offline and online exams are available for universities to use, we help them in their transition from offline to online exams, one step at a time.

…and the possibility of cheating?

The possibility of fraud is another noticeable drawback. Even though there are many tools to prevent fraud, like parametrizing assessments, asking students to deliver their answers by using their webcam or audio, along with using plagiarism and proctoring tools, there will always be some students that will out-run the system and find a way to cheat – and this is where experienced educators, with good assessment design add the vital human element to the endeavour.

While implementing a new assessment platform may have some drawbacks, the benefits for both educators and students, along with the substantial administrative efficiencies, can ultimately outweigh the challenges and enhance the overall assessment experience of Universities.