Results - Remote EDU

In the context of Covid-19 instructors face the need to also transfer assessment to online contexts and develop alternative ways to assessing their students’ learning. To date, there is - to the best of our knowledge - not yet an established framework that matches online assessments and the many versions of it that are now emerging and that are broadly applied with established learning taxonomies. Neither has assessment been in the focus of the numerous ad hoc activities that were set up to support instructors in the current situation. Target groups of this IO are therefore primarily instructors who will be able to use this IO as a first guideline into foundations of online assessments and learning taxonomy. The synthesized framework that emerges from this IO is innovative and closed this perceived gap. It can be transferred to different higher education institutions and generates inter-institutional impact.

This intellectual output aims at conducting a broad review of concepts, studies   and theories on online assessment and learning taxonomies. The review, first, will contribute to clarify the conceptualization of online assessment and learning taxonomies associated to it. As a result, the review will help to develop a framework of online assessment.

Leader: MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY (Turkey)

Framework and taxonomy development of online assessment at zenodo

This evaluation study is dedicated to exploring, analysing and reporting the perceptions of instructors, students and administrators (stakeholders) about online assessment within the partner institutions.

The objective is to draw on the current situation in each of the institutions to consider local, institutional and national perspectives and design of meaningful concepts of e-assessment (IO3), and of useful professional development for online assessment (IO5), and builds upon the theoretical framework for e-assessment developed (IO1) and the needs for eassessment for virtual mobility (IO4).

Considering that all stakeholders have by now some kind of experience with e-assessment, it is cornerstone to collect those experiences in an empirical way, to use them in the developments planned in this project. So far not too much information on this topic has been collected beyond theoretical perspectives, anecdotal records and small-scale studies. The impact expected is especially on the developments to be prepared and the awareness on the current situation from the stakeholders’s perspectives based on the large-scale institutional exposure to e-assessment. The potential for transferability will be high, considering the different types of institutions in terms of expertise and size.

These perspectives will be collected in online surveys with concrete questions for each of the target groups, and will be documented in diverse PUBLICATIONS and shared on the WEBSITE of the project. Additionally, stakeholders will be informed about the results via PRESS and SOCIAL MEDIA and invited to discuss them in different event formats, for instance, in online panel discussions, online workshops or webinars.

Leader: UNIVERSITAT DE LLEIDA (Spain)

The current situation caused by the pandemic is characterized through institutional and individual uncertainty of how to conduct assessment in higher education, not only due to legislative and pedagogical questions, but also technical ones. The latter can hardly be influenced through individual faculty and therefore require generic concepts and procedure that are applicable to different contexts. This IO provides guidance on which technical concepts enables which pedagogical intention and setting. Instructors are the primary target groups for this IO, jointly with responsibles in IT services who cater to technical functioning of assessments.

From a pedagogical point of view four core e-assessments/e-exams can be defined: E-exams in presence (on institutional computers, in Lan-Network, or mobile in W-Lan-Network); Openbook Online with no time constrains; Remote online exams with time constrains and Remote online exams with proctoring concepts (personal/automated) for vigilance. Each of these settings has specific technical requirements (hard/software), specific settings, data protection regulations and pre-information needs. In the context of this IO an interactive Q&A tool (online access) will be defined and produced based on research and practice in the field. The Q&A tool is designed to support newcomers as well as long-term practitioners to setup and further development their e-Assessment and e-Exam approaches, IT and information  packages.

The innovative element of this IO lies in its combination of providing an interactive Q&A tool and a check list about the different solutions that guides instructors through the decision-making process of what technical concepts matches their pedagogical approach. We will develop a Q&A tool that responds to the needs of teachers and proposes and defines the optimal e-Assessment solutions. The strength of these Q&A tools lies in its easy transferability to other education contexts, making it suitable for multiple usage. Under an open license, it can also be adapted to other contexts if needed. Thus, it can be quite helpful across different domains.

Leader: ILI-FAU (Germany)

Online assessment has particular significance in the context of European collaboration on education, in the form of Virtual Mobility. Virtual Mobility is defined as "“the set of ICT supported activities, organized at institutional level, that realise or facilitate international, collaborative experiences in a context of teaching and/or learning”.

In recent years, virtual mobility has become a key strategic theme in the European Higher Education Area, with the establishment of Virtual Mobility tracks within the Erasmus Student Exchange and the promotion of university networks that aim to facilitate virtual exchanges. These strategic advances build on decades of projects on this concept as a means of broadening   internationalisation in education, taking advantage of the technical   possibilities offered by digitalisation.

In this output, we will look at the needs for online assessment within the context of Virtual Mobility. Its outcomes are aimed at teachers, teacher teams and educational support staff. The innovation in this output is twofold: (i) the reflection on assessment in Virtual Mobility through the focus of learner skills and experiential learning and (ii) the creation of a design-supporting instrument that combines the needs of assessment and of Virtual Mobility.

The outcome will be of value for several groups: teachers, teacher teams and educational support staff interested in assessment in Virtual Mobility activities on a micro-level and higher education support staff interested in how to approach assessment in VM on a macro-level. The outcomes will also be of interest to the growing number of institutions and teachers interested in the concepts of VM across Europe and world-wide.

Leader: KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN (Belgium)

The open online course that is developed in Remote.EDU meets the current and presently growing need of providing pedagogically sound concepts for developing online assessments in higher education and offering means of exchange within the community. Instructors, support staff and institutions alike presently face uncertainty in regard to assessment pedagogy and doing  so from different perspectives and are the primary target group of this IO’s resulting online course. To our best knowledge, among the existing open offerings that have been developed in the field of professional development  for teaching online in the context of Covid-19, the topic of online assessment has not comprehensively been covered. It is not a stand-alone topic but needs to be considered against the broader background of teaching  and learning as well as the questions of (virtual) mobility that characterize the European Higher Education Area. This illustrates the need for an innovative approach that is constituted through this course. The impact that is to be expected form such a course is assumed to be high as it targets instructors across Europe who face the same situation and have the same questions and needs. Being open to the public and fully online, the course will help to generate knowledge beyond borders. It can be transferred into the professional development offerings at the individual institutions who can make modifications if needed   or also extract individual parts of the course as they see fit.