Glenrothes College leads the charge for online assessment best practice in Scotland, Questionmark Perception at the centre of the project

Questionmark Case Study

Introduction to the Project

As part of a drive to advance the Scottish further education sector's use of technology to support students' development, the Scottish Further Education Funding Council (SFEFC) has sponsored a project to find best practice in online assessment. The lead college in this scheme is Glenrothes College, joined by five other partner colleges. The objectives of the project were to establish the key products available for online assessments, how to create assessments and how to get practical assessments to students effectively. The programme also aimed to give staff opportunities to develop their own skills, as well as for delivering better value to their students.  At the end of the project, Glenrothes College was required to provide the Council with a detailed report on the lessons learnt from the trial and to give ideas of the way to take these lessons forward for all colleges in Scotland.  According to Graeme Clark, Learning Systems Development Officer for Glenrothes College, "Assessment is not very far forward in Scottish colleges. This means that we didn't have any previous examples on which to base our project and we were starting with a blank sheet of paper. The first thing we had to do was to find out what software packages were out there and then test and evaluate them to find just a couple to move forward with."

The Software of Choice

Graeme Clark says, "Questionmark Perception seemed to be the best bet. The software satisfied all of our key requirements for ease of use, functionality, and speed of delivery. Importantly, it is also a standards-based solution so it may be linked to other leading complementary products. As a company, Questionmark has a strong track record in the education sector so they were well equipped to understand our specific needs."  All colleges involved in the project were given a product to work with at their own pace. There was no pressure to make certain decisions at the end of the project, which ran from March 2001 to March 2002.

Analysing the Progress

When analysing the progress, one of the greatest benefits found was in staff development. Running assessments online opens up new avenues to the staff who are setting the questions. Questionmark Perception offers around 15 question types alone - this enables staff to examine knowledge and skills in new and more interesting ways. When automatic marking is added into the mix, objective assessments can be made which are far more powerful than anything that can be created on paper. The possibilities opened up by online assessments versus offline were significant and engendered a great deal of enthusiasm amongst those involved in the project. In fact, it represents a possible change in the culture within the colleges.

Moving Forward

Since the project finished, the SFEFC has granted further funding to enable Glenrothes College to effectively disseminate its findings to all other colleges in Scotland (45 in total). According to Graeme Clark, "This will involve the production of some guidelines to the sector on how we (the sector) can take this forward as well as speaking to Subject-specialist groups such as the Numeracy and Communication forums based at SFEU (Scottish Further Education Unit) in Stirling." Graeme Clark comments, "The Funding Council has recognised that online assessment is an issue that needs addressing in Scottish colleges. They see this as an ideal way of using technology to bring real benefits to the students, staff and the colleges as a whole through more interesting and thought-provoking questioning and detailed analysis of test results. We are now in the process of disseminating our knowledge and skills not just by offering the pre-written assessments and the product, but through staff development events. Our project has centred around only two products, one of which is Questionmark Perception. We believe that this puts Questionmark in a strong position in the Scottish colleges."

Developing the Project Further

Now that the online assessment project is completed and the results are being disseminated, the Funding Council has introduced a further extension to the project by providing funding for the colleges to invest in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). Graeme Clark says, "We are trying to promote some sort of central assessment provider for Scottish colleges. The reason is that individual colleges will not have the resources to develop everything on their own. It would make sense to look at the sector as a whole and to develop a central body to provide accredited, verified assessments. We believe that Questionmark Perception could play a pivotal role in providing a technology solution for our colleges."

Questionmark was founded in the UK in 1988 and was one of the first software companies to provide an authoring framework to create tests and assessments to run on PCs. Today the company offers a full range of software for the testing and assessment marketplace spanning Windows 3.X and 95, DOS, Macintosh and web environments. Businesses, governments, and universities in over 40 countries now use Questionmark software.

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