The Development of a Master Thesis Mediated Through Technology

It is not always easy to start a research process. When doing a master thesis, it is necessary to take into consideration that there is no previous experience in the scientific process. Usually, during the development of a master thesis, student and supervisor work side-by-side or at least with a stronger support from the side of the supervisor. It is expected to have the supervisor close by to clarify doubts or point ways. But what happens when student and supervisor are not close by? When they communicate at distance, using different means to reach their purposes? How to help the student to find his/her way and, even more important, to keep him/her motivated in this solitary road? In this chapter, the authors present a situation where supervisors and students are separated by an ocean. They describe the challenges faced by both supervisor and students and give some recommendations in order to help other similar key players to overcome the difficulties and be successful.

Staff Reflections on Using E-Assessment Feedback in the Digital Age

Assessment and feedback represent two of the key elements that affect students' learning. Using e-assessment with productive and instant e-feedback reduces the gap between current and preferred performance of the new generation of digital students. Action research methodology was used to investigate staff perception of using e-assessment feedback in the teaching and learning process. To achieve this aim, a survey was administered to 48 full-time academics to collect data about their perceptions of using e-assessment and/or e-feedback to assess their students' performance. And then seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with the staff. Findings from staff survey and interviews show that the teaching staff is generally in agreement with the use of and benefits of e-assessment and/or e-feedback in teaching business and management modules. Using technology, therefore, can provide an avenue for innovative assessment and prompt feedback methods that meet the needs of the digital students in the digital age in an efficient and effective manner.

E-Assessment in Portuguese Higher Education

The new learning scenarios resulting from technological development and in particular of Web 2.0 make it necessary to rethink the teaching practices in higher education, namely at the level of assessment strategies aligned with more recent paradigms. The assessment of competences requires an approach where knowledge, abilities, and attitudes are integrated, implying the use of a variety of assessment strategies. What models can anchor this new assessment culture? How can one design an assessment program that guarantees the quality of this new approach? Based on a new theoretical framework for e-assessment in higher education, the authors construct and apply a survey aimed to identify the practices and the perspectives of the teachers, and the experiences and the perspectives of the students in public higher education institutions. In this chapter, the authors present and discuss the results obtained and advance a proposal for teacher training.

A Revolutionized Model for Teaching Practicum and Assessment

Teaching practicum is an integral feature of any education-based program. Teaching competency, expertise, and quality are developed and refined during the practicum, as a form to assess these teachers to-be. Traditionally, it is conducted with the supervisors visiting the supervisees' schools for observations of the teaching and learning activities in class. Tapping on the advent of technology, researchers from USIM have innovated this practice through an online practicum supervision tool called electronic practicum assessment model (e-PRASMO). After undergoing two rounds of research and improvisation, e-PRASMO embodies the strengths of its innovation and practicality: cost effectiveness, stress-free environment, flexibility, technological enhancement, reflexivity, and accessibility. It also espouses the framework of the 3 P's model by Biggs, showing the amalgamation of both the online and traditional teaching practicum activities. With more uniqueness offered by e-PRASMO, it becomes a revolutionized innovation for practicum method and assessment aligned with the current era.

Integrating Assessment, Feedback, and Learning Analytics in Educational Games

Assessment is a crucial aspect of any teaching and learning process. New tools such as educational games offer promising advantages: they can personalize feedback to students and save educators time by automating the assessment process. However, while many teachers agree that educational games increase motivation, learning, and retention, few are ready to fully trust them as an assessment tool. A likely reason behind this lack of trust is that educational games are distributed as black boxes, unmodifiable by educators and not providing enough insight about the gameplay. This chapter presents three systematic literature reviews looking into the integration of assessment, feedback, and learning analytics in educational games. It then proposes a framework and present a fully developed engine. The engine is used by both developers and educators. Designed to separate game and assessment, it allows teachers to modify the assessment after distribution and visualize gameplay data via a learning analytics dashboard.

Evaluating E-Assessment

Assessment is an important phase of the teaching and learning processes. Assessment generates a big amount of data, which in the case of summative assessment is in the form of students' grades. In e-assessment application, these grades are easily collected and stored. The analysis of the grades is very important to directly evaluate e-assessment and thus indirectly evaluate the teaching and learning processes. This chapter presents a practical example of analysis of grades obtained during an e-assessment process implementation using statistical methods. Important tips on how to correctly use these statistical methods are presented throughout the chapter. The analysis concerns seven years, and a positive evolution of the grades is verified.

Assurance of Learning and Accreditations Through Assessment in Business Schools

The use of web-based technologies in academic institutions for their diverse practices has been widespread in colleges and universities for several decades. These applications include surveying stakeholders, assessing classes, reporting on faculty development, and assurance of learning data to mention a few. Further advances have led to the integration of applications that not only enable the sharing of knowledge, but which also support the reporting requirements necessary to obtain and retain accreditation; likewise satisfy the supply of intellectual capital to the employment marketplace. In this chapter, the authors aim to portray relationship between assurance of learning and assessment at large with real life examples and approaches.

E-Assessment and Multiple-Choice Questions

The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the assessment process is becoming an asset, giving rise to the so-called computer-based assessment or e-assessment. Nowadays, its use is becoming more usual in higher education institutions. Closed formats for questions, namely multiple choice, are the most commonly used. This chapter presents a literature review of the main aspects related to this topic, including the main modalities of assessment (summative assessment and continuous assessment). Issues related to multiple choice questions (MCQ) are discussed with more detail, referring to the various formats of MCQ, its advantages and limitations, with a particular focus on its use in mathematics tests. Also, some guidelines for the quality assurance of MCQ with quality are included.

Tools for E-Assessment Techniques in Education

The chapter explains the basic definition and objective of e-assessment. Advantages and disadvantages of the e-assessment process are briefed. There are various techniques used for accessing online in an e-learning environment. Some of the techniques are explained with examples. To perform e-assessment using these techniques, there are tools available. Some of the tools are developed by individual organizations for their own purpose while others are public platforms which can be used by anyone. Most of the learning management systems (LMS) use e-assessment tools. This chapter focuses primarily on the e-assessment tools of various types used in education domain. Various techniques of e-assessment used by these tools are explained like MCQs, essay type questions, e-portfolios, discussion forums, blogs, wikis, etc. Tools specific to programming languages are explained in detail. Further, tools related to problems of mathematics are explained. There are various tools for peer-assessment. A detailed study of those tools is presented.

E-Assessment of Cognitive Skills in Outcome-Based Education for Object-Oriented Programming

This chapter describes how the Edmodo and Moodle—the open source learning management systems (LMS)—can be used for e-assessment to evaluate the cognitive skills of students in programming paper such as object-oriented programming, where the practical content has programming constructs, debugging code snippets, analysis of results when employing different language constructs to solve the same problem, etc. This work shows (1) how Edmodo could be used to submit the assignments on time with timely reminders, access the external tools, and the analysis of the results to improve the performance assessment online, and (2) how Moodle plays a vital role in making the learning process an easier one. Based on the experience gained on teaching object-oriented programming subject with e-assessment based on Edmodo to help OBE to achieve better results, this chapter provides as a case study for further application and research in this area.