posted on 2023-08-30, 15:27authored byMike Mimirinis
The paper reports the results of a phenomenographic study on academics' conceptions of e-assessment. A cohort of twenty-one academics from seventeen disciplines participated in semi-structured interviews exploring their experiences of using web-based technologies for formative and summative assessment purposes. Through iterative analysis of the interview transcripts, the study identified four qualitatively different ways in which academic teachers understand e-assessment; e-assessment was seen as a means of: (a) efficiently managing and streamlining the assessment process (b) facilitating dialogue and student engagement (c) enhancing student learning, and (d) developing (digital) identity and the community. Six interrelated dimensions of variation were also established: the benefit of e-assessment, the role of the assessing teacher, the role of the assessed student, the role of the medium, the purpose, quality and level of collaboration, and, finally, the relationship between e-assessment and teaching and learning. The results thematise how university teachers relate to technology-enabled assessment and represent incrementally expanding levels of agency within relatively recent, often hybrid assessment milieus. More importantly, the reported dimensions of variation can be utilised to inform which aspects of e-assessment warrant further attention for the improvement of formative and summative assessment design and practice.
ARCHIVED Faculty of Health, Social Care & Education (until September 2018)
Note
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02602938.2018.1493087.