- Email: [email protected]
Computer-Assisted Assessment in Higher Education
Computers & Education 35 (2000) 243±249
www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu
Book reviews Computer-Assisted Assessment in Higher Education Edited by Sally Brown, Phil Race and Joanna Bull. Kogan Page, London. 1999. 205 pp, ISBN 0-7494-3035-4. £18.99 (paperback) Sally Brown, now a director in the Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, Phil Race, at Durham University, and Joanna Bull, at the University of Luton, are well-known in the United Kingdom. In this volume they have taken the lead in putting together nearly 20 chapters written by other people on the dicult subject of computer-assisted assessment in higher education. I say `dicult' because in many respects there is very little new to say. Assessment in higher education has been discussed during the whole of my lifetime, if not longer, without radical changes occurring. In North America, heavy dependence on multiple-choice questions and `write-in' answers continues, while on the whole they are still rejected by British academics. Computer-assisted assessment goes back at least 35 years, more if you include the tests built into early forms of computer-assisted learning developed at Stanford University, the University of Illinois and even Brighton Technical College. It is already 29 years since the Open University ®rst used computer-marked assignments for its Foundation courses with over 20,000 students. The arrival of PCs, IT and then ICT in higher education stimulated renewed interest in this ®eld, of course. So did demands placed on academics, British and American, by much larger student numbers in the 1990s. Surely computer-assisted assessment is cost-eective? Surely developments since 1965 have enabled academics to escape the limitations of multiple-choice tests? Isn't this the assessment mode for the 21st century? The papers in this book don't answer any of these questions, I'm sorry to say. Very few contain any serious evaluation of costs or eectiveness. Hardly any mention new developments that might encourage my colleagues to move away from setting essays and similar assignments each of which requires at least half an hour for marking and commenting. If this is to be the assessment mode for the 21st century, much more research and development work is required, and soon. One of the best papers is `Automated online tutorials' by Alan Cann and Ellen Pawley (University of Leicester, see www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/tutorials/tutorials.html). Developing each biology tutorial in hypertext is quite costly, but the overhead is ®xed whether few or many students use the software. In trials, over 3000 answers were recorded and marked in 6 hours, with each student receiving personalised feedback. Written at Southern Cross University (Australia), Meg O'Reilly and Chris Morgan's `Online assessment: creating communities and opportunities' discusses four very brief but illuminating case studies. These show that the actual act of assessment is computer-assisted far less than the
244
Book reviews / Computers & Education 35 (2000) 243±249
interactions between students, and between students and their tutors, that lead up to submitting the assignment. Collaborative working and computer conferencing have spawned a large, recent literature, but computer-assisted assessment has not. Kay Sambell, Alistair Sambell and Graham Sexton (University of Northumbria) contribute the only paper in which students' attitudes towards computer-assisted self-assessment are evaluated. Students in an electronic engineering class said the tests were less stressful than examinations, and useful for practice. They found opportunities for active and collaborative learning. They liked the detailed feedback obtainable from the tutors. Most of the papers will prove valuable to new lecturers who have never been near computerassisted assessment and would like an introduction. This book is replete with handy hints and benign advice, with only a few dire warnings. Without doubt, the papers could start healthy discussions in face-to-face workshops on the subject. It should even be possible to devise an online course round these pages, with, heavens alive, computer-assisted assessment at the end. David Hawkridge Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University Milton Keynes MK6 7AA, UK E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S 0 3 6 0 - 1 3 1 5 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 2 7 - 0
Young People, Creativity and New Technologies By Julian Sefton-Green, Routledge, London. 1999. 161 pp., ISBN 0-415-20313-9 £15.99 (paperback) Government funding initiatives throughout 1999 have ear-marked signi®cant resources for Information Communications Technologies (ICTs) for schools and for training teachers in their use. The training initiatives have speci®cally targeted the 450,000 teachers who, it is felt, need to develop their ICT skills. The core of this book is a set of case studies which represent some of the best current practice in schools in the use of ICTs. The teachers who have been involved in the projects described in the case studies, in eect represent the remaining 50,000 teachers who have already developed these skills. The book argues for the use of ICTs to expand the possibilities for creative and artistic work within the formal curriculum and in complimentary educational sites. The case studies are intended to support this central argument but are restricted to examples of the technology as a new media form in itself. The book arose from a seminar series organised by the Visual Arts Department of the Arts Council of England, so it is not surprising that its subtitle is The Challenge of Digital Arts. However, the phrase `digital arts' has been extended in the book to refer to any work produced in a digital format and able to be manipulated by a computer. Eight case studies are linked to speci®c school projects and of these, two are CD-ROM based and ®ve Web/Internet based. The eighth is a more general look at primary children working with ICT in the visual arts and the issues it raises for teacher development. Woven
www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu
Book reviews Computer-Assisted Assessment in Higher Education Edited by Sally Brown, Phil Race and Joanna Bull. Kogan Page, London. 1999. 205 pp, ISBN 0-7494-3035-4. £18.99 (paperback) Sally Brown, now a director in the Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, Phil Race, at Durham University, and Joanna Bull, at the University of Luton, are well-known in the United Kingdom. In this volume they have taken the lead in putting together nearly 20 chapters written by other people on the dicult subject of computer-assisted assessment in higher education. I say `dicult' because in many respects there is very little new to say. Assessment in higher education has been discussed during the whole of my lifetime, if not longer, without radical changes occurring. In North America, heavy dependence on multiple-choice questions and `write-in' answers continues, while on the whole they are still rejected by British academics. Computer-assisted assessment goes back at least 35 years, more if you include the tests built into early forms of computer-assisted learning developed at Stanford University, the University of Illinois and even Brighton Technical College. It is already 29 years since the Open University ®rst used computer-marked assignments for its Foundation courses with over 20,000 students. The arrival of PCs, IT and then ICT in higher education stimulated renewed interest in this ®eld, of course. So did demands placed on academics, British and American, by much larger student numbers in the 1990s. Surely computer-assisted assessment is cost-eective? Surely developments since 1965 have enabled academics to escape the limitations of multiple-choice tests? Isn't this the assessment mode for the 21st century? The papers in this book don't answer any of these questions, I'm sorry to say. Very few contain any serious evaluation of costs or eectiveness. Hardly any mention new developments that might encourage my colleagues to move away from setting essays and similar assignments each of which requires at least half an hour for marking and commenting. If this is to be the assessment mode for the 21st century, much more research and development work is required, and soon. One of the best papers is `Automated online tutorials' by Alan Cann and Ellen Pawley (University of Leicester, see www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/tutorials/tutorials.html). Developing each biology tutorial in hypertext is quite costly, but the overhead is ®xed whether few or many students use the software. In trials, over 3000 answers were recorded and marked in 6 hours, with each student receiving personalised feedback. Written at Southern Cross University (Australia), Meg O'Reilly and Chris Morgan's `Online assessment: creating communities and opportunities' discusses four very brief but illuminating case studies. These show that the actual act of assessment is computer-assisted far less than the
244
Book reviews / Computers & Education 35 (2000) 243±249
interactions between students, and between students and their tutors, that lead up to submitting the assignment. Collaborative working and computer conferencing have spawned a large, recent literature, but computer-assisted assessment has not. Kay Sambell, Alistair Sambell and Graham Sexton (University of Northumbria) contribute the only paper in which students' attitudes towards computer-assisted self-assessment are evaluated. Students in an electronic engineering class said the tests were less stressful than examinations, and useful for practice. They found opportunities for active and collaborative learning. They liked the detailed feedback obtainable from the tutors. Most of the papers will prove valuable to new lecturers who have never been near computerassisted assessment and would like an introduction. This book is replete with handy hints and benign advice, with only a few dire warnings. Without doubt, the papers could start healthy discussions in face-to-face workshops on the subject. It should even be possible to devise an online course round these pages, with, heavens alive, computer-assisted assessment at the end. David Hawkridge Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University Milton Keynes MK6 7AA, UK E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S 0 3 6 0 - 1 3 1 5 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 2 7 - 0
Young People, Creativity and New Technologies By Julian Sefton-Green, Routledge, London. 1999. 161 pp., ISBN 0-415-20313-9 £15.99 (paperback) Government funding initiatives throughout 1999 have ear-marked signi®cant resources for Information Communications Technologies (ICTs) for schools and for training teachers in their use. The training initiatives have speci®cally targeted the 450,000 teachers who, it is felt, need to develop their ICT skills. The core of this book is a set of case studies which represent some of the best current practice in schools in the use of ICTs. The teachers who have been involved in the projects described in the case studies, in eect represent the remaining 50,000 teachers who have already developed these skills. The book argues for the use of ICTs to expand the possibilities for creative and artistic work within the formal curriculum and in complimentary educational sites. The case studies are intended to support this central argument but are restricted to examples of the technology as a new media form in itself. The book arose from a seminar series organised by the Visual Arts Department of the Arts Council of England, so it is not surprising that its subtitle is The Challenge of Digital Arts. However, the phrase `digital arts' has been extended in the book to refer to any work produced in a digital format and able to be manipulated by a computer. Eight case studies are linked to speci®c school projects and of these, two are CD-ROM based and ®ve Web/Internet based. The eighth is a more general look at primary children working with ICT in the visual arts and the issues it raises for teacher development. Woven