Transforming Assessment website. A joint project developed by Geoffrey Crisp and Mathew Hillier.
As ‘Transforming Assessment’, we are interested in how assessment tasks (both formative and summative) are set and graded within the online environment. Secondly how performance data is collected and then used to give a mark and feedback to students. i.e. such that the assessment process is integrated into the online teaching environment itself. This includes having students carry out the assessment tasks, tracking performance, providing guidance, summing grades and providing feedback.
We have created (both developed ourselves and gathered from others) a collection of exemplars demonstrating complete or part e-assessment workflows within the online environment that will be showcased online and face to face at conferences, workshops and web seminars (webinars).
‘Transforming Assessment’ is the name coined to describe our work. We are entirely non-profit and aim to provide content and resources for free to the academic community and the public. Membership to our news/mailing list, websites and social media groups is free as is attendance at our webinars.
Transforming Assessment History
Transforming Assessment started as an Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) national fellowship program lead by Professor Geoff Crisp with assistance from Dr Mathew Hillier and Mr Shamim Joarder. The work was funded by the ALTC from 2009 to the end of 2011 and was based at the University of Adelaide. During this period the first set of assessment examples were constructed to showcase technologies in the context of e-assessment. These included, discussion forums, voice boards, virtual classroom platforms, social networking (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin), multimedia (YouTube, Flickr, QVR), e-portfolios, blogs, wikis, serious games, simulations, virtual worlds (second life, open sim, thinking worlds), voting/polling (votapedia, clickers), L.M.S (Moodle 1.9, Blackboard/Webct), virtual labs, remote labs and augmented reality. The first year-long series of webinars (online seminars) was run allowing audiences from Australasia to the UK to share knowledge around e-assessment practices.
The aim of the original fellowship was to develop strategies to assist teachers and higher education institutions align their learning, teaching and assessment practices in a rapidly changing digital context, particularly within web 2.0 environments. Web 2.0 in this case means the ideal of participatory involvement in the online environment representing collaboration, social interaction, and user control.