The winners of the first Scottish e-Assessment Awards were announced at last week’s e-Assessment Scotland conference.
The conference was one of the most popular ever hosted by the JISC Regional Support Centres with partner organisations: Dundee University, e-Assessment Association, SQA, e-Learning Alliance and Higher Education Academy. Delegates flocked from schools, universities and colleges, clearly showing that the subject of e-assessment had hit a nerve across all sectors.
The Awards were presented by Cliff Beevers, chair of the UK’s e-Assessment Association.
The links below are to short-listed entry posters, which describe the projects that were displayed at the event. There are plans to produce a publication detailing all of the entries for the Awards.
The Higher Education blog for Scotland North and East recently hit it’s 100th post. Since its first post in May last year a wide variety of topics have been covered from the analysis of research publications, interviews with noted academics and tips on how to enhance teaching and learning using a range of tools and techniques.
For it’s 100th post MASHe highlighted how a simple ‘mashup’ of twitter and Yahoo Pipes could be used as a free electronic voting system. This post has kindly been highlighted in Seb Schmoller’s Forthnightly Mailing and Jane Hart’s Social Media in Learning blog, which has resulted in a small flurry of ‘retweets’ as others pick up on the idea.
Scotland’s first annual e-Assessment conference has been scheduled for the 25th of September at Dundee’s Hilton hotel. Bringing together speakers from schools, further and higher education, the event will showcase Scottish innovation and best practice in the field.
It’s free to attend the one-day event, which will also play host to the Scottish e-Assessment Awards, which recognises achievements in the categories of:
Formative e-Assessment
Summative e-Assessment
e-Portfolio/PDP
Mobile e-Assessment
e-Assessment Administration
Innovation
The conference is being organised by the University of Dundee, e-Assessment Association, Scottish Regional Support Centres, SQA and Higher Education Academy.
More details on how to book a place at the conference and submit an entry to the Scottish e-Assessment Awards can be found on the eAssessment Scotland website (which is due to be launched at the end of this week – 26/06/09).
If you have an e-Assessment story that you would like featured in the e-Assessment Association’s newsletter (a UK publication), then please contact Kenji Lamb at RSC Scotland North & East.
Also, if you’re involved with e-Assessment, you might like to take adavantage of the current offer of free annual membership to the Association (details in the newsletter).
In May 2008, SQA had funding approved to support the continuing development of National Certificates and NPAs with a focus on the use of technology – the TranSETT Project (www.sqa.org.uk/europe). The funding was provided by European Structural Funds, Scottish Government and SQA. The first year of TranSETT has seen SQA create e-assessments and, in partnership with Scotland’s Colleges, web-based support materials for a range of subject areas. These resources will start to become available for centres to use from August 2009 , supported by a series of dissemination and training events.
In March 2009, SQA was approved for an additional £1.2m of European funding to continue and expand the development of innovative resources supporting a wider range of National Certificates and NPAs. This additional funding has been secured until 2011 and will allow SQA, with its partners, to continue this exciting development. Not only will we be developing more e-assessment and web-based learning materials but would also like to respond to the increasing use of other internet-based technologies to support learning, such as games-based assessment and e-portfolios.
Interested parties now have an opportunity to get involved in this development by completing our tender questionnaire.
Further information is also available in the help section of the website, or by contacting the SQA procurement team and quoting reference SQA1446. (E-mail: procurement@sqa.org.uk)
Our colleagues at the Regional Support Centre, Eastern have developed an open source tool called Maxos.
Maxos is combination of Xerte and Moodle which can be run from a USB drive. Xerte is an open source tool for creating accessible and inclusive learning objects and Moodle is an open source virtual learning environment (VLE). Becuase Maxos runs from a USB drive it allows learners to access learning content where and when they choose to do so.
The designers of Xerte at the University of Nottingham have worked very closely with JISC TechDis to ensure that the objects include a full range of accessibility features, allowing font sizes, colours and contrast to be adjustable by the user as well as providing audio support for those with impaired vision.
In The RSC NewsFeed March Offcuts we highlighted ScreenToaster the free online application which allows you to record the activity on your computer screen with a single click. The concept of recording your screen is not new and there are various commercial (Camtasia) and free (CamStudio) applications to do this. The advantage of ScreenToaster is that it doesn’t require you to install any software and integrates into their hosting service so you have somewhere to put your video files.
Uses for this technology include recording tutorials, training materials or even lectures. Another area you could use it is to record feedback on student’s work. Russell Stannard recently won a Times Higher Education Award partly for his work in this particular area (click here for a short example of video feedback). Russell has also prepared a case study in Using Screen Capture Software in Student Feedback for the Higher Education Academy English Subject Centre.
Students are continually reporting dissatisfaction in the feedback they receive during their studies. Common complaints including timing, clarity and usefulness. An area being rediscovered by academics is the use of audio feedback. Audio feedback can be broadly defined as the use of digital media to record messages to individuals or groups of students to provide feedback on both ongoing and submitted work.
Not only do students appear more likely to engage with audio feedback but they also find it easier to understand. In the particular case of individual audio feedback students highlight the personal nature of being able to hear their tutors voice. If you are still not convinced by audio feedback you should listen to this clip of students from the University of Chester and Sheffield Hallam talking about their experiences of receiving audio feedback (this clip was captured at at the last Podcasting for Pedagogic Purposes SIG at Glasgow Caledonian University)
About 6,000 students in Norway are doing exams on their laptops in a trial that could soon be rolled out across the country.
Photo:www.dag.nl
A computer monitoring system originally designed for enterprises and government department use has made a new era of digital exams possible at schools in Norway. Click here for the details from BBC Technology News.
Norway has a reputation for innovative use of ICT in Education. So far, the exam monitoring system based on 3ami’s Monitoring and Audit System (MAS) is in use by up to 6000 students, at 11 high schools in pioneering Nord-Trøndelag. MAS Education Edition is designed to be rolled out easily by other Norwegian counties, and many are expected to follow Nord-Trøndelag’s lead as a way to meet government requirements.
JISC invites tenders for a study involving mixed methods to look at qualitative and quantitative measures of fitness for purpose in the content of a selection of e-assessments used in the JISC community today. The study aims to support educators in creating and procuring fit for purpose e-assessments, based on a sound understanding of quality measures and the issues around use of e-assessment. Up to £40,000 (including VAT and expenses) is available for the study over a five-month period starting as soon as possible and no later than 31st October 2008. Deadline for submission of tenders: 12:00 on Monday 22 September 2008.
Welcome to the RSC NewsFeed blog from the two Scottish Regional Support Centres. The blog is designed to keep the FE and HE community informed about the latest ICT-related news, events, resources and training. Please feel free to leave a comment.
The winners of the first Scottish e-Assessment Awards were announced at last week’s e-Assessment Scotland conference. 
Scotland’s first annual e-Assessment conference has been scheduled for the 25th of September at Dundee’s Hilton hotel. Bringing together speakers from schools, further and higher education, the event will showcase Scottish innovation and best practice in the field.
The latest copy of the 
