On-line formative assessment item banking and learning support

Abstract

Access to the Internet now makes it possible to deliver new services to centres around\nthe world including on-line formative assessments for use in the classroom. The results\nof these assessments provide information that can feed back into the learning and\nteaching process to highlight where improvements can be made. This can be a\nproductive tool in improving student learning and has significant potential to provide a\nricher educational experience. For this potential to be developed, large item banks\ncontaining questions with known operating characteristics are required so that valid and\nreliable assessments can be built. Questions can be stored as assessing particular\nlearning outcomes, levels of attainment, skills or other features, thus allowing specific\nfeedback to students and to their teachers indicating curriculum areas or skills in which\nstudents were relatively strong or weak.\nThe limitations on the types of questions that can be asked on-line and marked\nobjectively by computer limits the use that can be made of the results of on-line\nassessment. As a greater variation in the types of questions becomes available, so the\nuse that may be made of the results increases.\nAs item banks are used to build assessments for known cohorts of students and results\nare collated over a period of time it becomes possible to supply more meaningful\nfeedback to the users of assessments. The use of calibrated banks, and careful data\nmanagement will extend this use.\nThe future for the Cambridge on-line assessments will be determined by the opinions of\nthe teachers as to which forms of feedback are the most useful for themselves and their\nstudents.