“Assessment is a solid resource in the modern higher education institution. Transforming assessment policy and practice can bring cost savings in administration and quality assurance. These savings are generated by reducing summative assessment, improving failure rates and retention as well as reducing instances of malpractice, non-submissions, complains and appeals,” says the Higher Education Academy (HEA), a UK-based organization, in its “A Market Improvement: Transforming assessment in higher education” report.
Institutions around the world have adopted assessment methods and processes as a part of their basic academic and administrative strategic planning to achieve, maintain and improve accreditation recognitions, which is currently one of the key factors that students consider to choose where they are going to study a higher education degree.
Next to this, they also have incorporated assessment technology to store, to control and manage essential data to monitor processes, to identify breaches and poor performances, to fix them and improve them. These technologies don’t only aim for KPI metrics measurement for institutional management, but also for student learning experiences, student retention and student engagement – all key factors that shape higher education excellence.
According to the Higher Education Academy, “by harnessing relevant technologies, the student experience can be enhanced through better access to assessment information, a broader range of tasks, automated or speedier feedback, student-student and student staff dialogue regarding assessment and support for peer and group assessment. For example, the use of web tools, such as blogs, forums and wikis involving group work and collaborative activity can offer innovative opportunities for assessment tasks.”
Many higher education institutions have defined the advantages of assessing academic and administrative performance through technological tools. The UK’s non-profit organization for higher education technology advisory JISC has properly summarized the following benefits of these methods:
Of course, every university will find its own benefits in using technologic tools for performance assessment and it surely vary according to the objectives of each institution, what they want to achieve through assessment and accreditation; and also will depend on regional, demographic and other important factors.
But several institutions have underlined the need for a major assessment integration, in order to improve a global academic growing and to enhance international collaboration.
“Although software applications for enhancing assessment in higher education are well established, it is clear that there is need for institutions to continue to adopt robust technological solutions to support assessment and feedback (…). This can have implications for the student experience. It is vital that institutions work to ensure that the technical infrastructure and systems are in place and that technical staff and learning technologists can work in partnership with teaching staff to successfully deploy relevant technologies. Regulatory frameworks also need to embrace the demands of technology-enhanced assessment, particularly in relation to online submission, security and data protection,” JISC say.
How easy is to coordinate and implement such level of integration and collaboration? Clearly, it isn’t a straight and plain road, but technology seems to be an important facilitator.
Jan-Martin Lowendahl, vice president of Gartner international consultants, says that “higher education is still mostly considered a conservative and slow-moving industry, with the majority of innovation coming from outside the traditional education IT organization. However, it is only a matter of time until all this innovation will impact the institution and, ultimately, the CIO."
According to Gartner data, global higher education sector spending is expected to grow 1.2% in 2016, reaching US$38.2 billion. In Australia, universities will spend A$1.7 billion on technology products and services, 4% more than last year. In New Zealand, the investment in this sector will reach NZ$268 million in 2016, 4.1% more than 2015.
How important assessment technologies are for your institution and for your local landscape? We invite you to share your experience.