It is now December 2015 and the CIT-eA project officially ended in July 2015. As the title of this post implies I am back to do some more work on the project after some unexpected detours!  (partly due to the success of our Clipper video project and the usual things life throws at us). So, finishing off some work on the case studies that need to be completed and put on line and a general tidy up and review. It’s a good time to return to the topic of e-assessment in education as our home institution – The City of Glasgow College – is going through some far reaching changes with the opening of new modern campuses and high expectations for the use of technology to support learning, with e-assessment being high on the agenda.

One of the themes of the original project was the need to adopt a systematic approach to implementing e-assessment and that will become clear as I write up the case studies – where small factors seem to have big effects on the outcomes. Another recent development has been our encounter with an Open University project in Scoltand called Opening Educational Practices Scotland (OEPS for short). The open education agenda might, at first, seem a bit distant from e-assessment but I think it brings some very useful tools and approaches to the established education systems – not least the ability to look at things differently. This is what is needed, as our established educational practices and institutions make the transition from paper-based assessment to digital technology.

The open agenda encourages us to look beyond merely repeating existing practice digitally (a common occurrence with new technology) to think of new ways to use the technology and solve long-standing problems. As part of the OEPS work the OU is making available a revamped version of their OpenLearn Works. I am hoping to convert some of the CIT-eA project outputs into an online course on that website. As part of that process I would like to incorporate some of the content produced at Heart of Worcester college in their WORDLE project (there is a useful case study here). The Worcester approach seems to embody the systematic approach that is needed and has certainly resulted in success and awards. I will return to this in another blog post as work progresses.