Ubiquitous computing is a model of human computer interaction in which computer processing has been integrated fully into daily activities, and also integrated into objects with which we routinely interact.  A Ubiquitous Learning Environment enables learning at any time, at any place.

Imagine you are a high school physics teacher and you are teaching concepts like gravity, friction, velocity and inertia. In a classic learning environment, you would be in your classroom with your students at a preset school period. But what if you could teach these concepts by taking your students to a soccer game or baseball game -

Origins of UL  

Mark Weiser from the Xerox PARC Lab ‘fathered’ UL more the twenty years ago. He envisioned three computer waves: mainframes which were prevalent at the time, personal desktop computers which were just appearing, and ‘Ubiquitous’ computing (also known as ‘ubicomp’), as the future. This third step is often referred to as reaching a point where the user is not aware of the computer, whatever form it has taken, but focuses only learning and the related materials.

Weiser identified three types of computer devices:

• Wearable
• Handheld
• Interactive Boards

And their main characteristics would be:

• Helpers/Servants
• Quite and Invisible
• User not necessarily aware of their presence, just the interaction
• Should not demand attention

Key characteristics of Ubiquitous Learning

The main characteristics of ubiquitous learning are: (Chen et al., 2002; Curtis et al., 2002)

• Permanency: Learning materials are always available unless purposely deleted.
• Accessibility:  Access from everywhere as personally required
• Immediacy:  Wherever a student is, he/she can immediately access learning materials.
• Interactivity: Online collaboration with teachers and/or peers (chat/blogs/forums)
• Situated instructional Activities: Learning in context (on-site).
• Adaptability: Getting the right information at the right place for the right student.

Pedagogical Basis of UL

The main pedagogical premise of Ubiquitous Learning is related to ‘situated learning’ (see J. Lave and E. Wenger, 1991) which is a general theory of knowledge acquisition that is based on the notion that ‘true’ learning occurs in the context of real life activities. In contrast, formal classroom learning implies knowledge abstraction and decontextualization. This abstraction may not be such a problem, but learning in context (as illustrated at the beginning of the article) can certainly improve learning (as does engaging learners in authentic tasks).

Another pedagogical premise of UL would be collaborative learning (involving social interaction), again undoubtedly improving the learning process.

UL in the Context of Today’s and Tomorrow’s Technology 

Today’s technology seems to be trending towards the actualization of the original UL concepts as described by Mark Weiser.  Two out of the four essential components have already been established, and two are just now appearing as described below.

1. Mobile Devices: powerful, personal mobile communication, processing and storage devices

The proliferation of personal mobile devices, starting from smart mobile phones and currently progressing to tablets, has created an important shift in the direction of innovation as an intrinsic aspect of technology.  Perhaps not yet widely apparent in terms of the potential, but the shift has happened and is irreversible.

We now have a hardware device (a tablet) that is highly ‘personal’, similarly to how personal a mobile phone is, but much more personal than a desktop pc or a laptop.

This computing device, although in exchange for a certain degree of ‘personalization’ compared to mobile phones, is able to powerfully communicate, store, process and access information. It has the mobility and autonomy of a mobile phone, but the processing power and screen of a computer, and so it is much more suitable for broader and more fundamental use. Importantly, it provides the opportunity to move away from an ‘Angry Birds’ takeover of mobile technology

2. Cloud Computing

Cloud platforms can now provide the server side ‘omnipresent’ aspects of UL.  Any system with UL characteristics would have to be fully cloud based so as to ensure reliability and seamless scalability.  If design and development is originally geared towards maximizing efficiency by keeping required cloud power low, ‘lean’ cloud applications can be developed that can then be scaled much more powerfully, thus enabling efficient and robust UL.

Intelligent Personal Agents/Knowledge Objects

Given that we now have widespread truly mobile hardware devices, the next step is intelligent personalized software.

In order to truly implement UL and make ‘real’ use of available hardware and software platforms, the implementation of a personal knowledge object/agent that is ‘intelligent’ is essential.  Using Artificial Intelligence Techniques, this object/agent would take part in a ‘learning network’ (i.e. learn automatically) and would contain a rule base from which to make decisions.

This knowledge object/agent would model the ‘learner’ and would be dynamic.  It would have attached processes that would implement functionality like the ability to interface with other objects like itself, or to other non-intelligent objects (e.g. Word document) or to other systems (e.g. SharePoint) or devices (e.g. a telescope).

This interface functionality would be implemented using standardized file formats and access languages, like HTML5, SQL, RDF and OWL which are available today. The latter two introduce the idea of semantic processing, moving beyond the ‘text’ level into concepts and conceptual organization schemes (Ontologies).  Once we move into the conceptual processing realm (Artificial Intelligence), then very important and exciting functionality, like knowledge inference (reasoning) can be provided, which will mark a true technological turning point.

In summary, this platform independent knowledge object/agent would be the main vehicle for implementing Ubiquitous Learning (as described above) as it would know:

• Who you are
• Where you are
• What device you are using
• Dynamic skills and ability profile
• Whether it is night or day
• What time its
• Who is near you
• What devices are near you

Although seemingly too ‘futuristic’, the proliferation of wearable online devices will further the implementation of UL. A good example is Google Glasses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Glass), with many more on the way.

A specific example

A student carrying a tablet approaches a telescope at school. The telescope ‘broadcasts’ its availability to the tablet which then informs the student of this. If the student agrees, the tablet connects to the telescope and sends information through its intelligent personal learning agent about the student, for example age, class, learning profile, interests, past projects and so on.

The telescope then transfers information that is appropriate for that particular student about itself, what it can do, and perhaps showing on the tablet screen what it is seeing right now. Also, the telescope connects to a cloud astronomy app, or to the Microsoft World Wide telescope for added experience and information.

Finally the telescope proposes a small interactive game from which it can assess the student to see what has been learned or not, and then perhaps contacting a fellow student to join the game online.

One thing is certain: the students would enjoy this, and so learning and assessment will have been achieved. This of course would be part of a broader educational strategy that would include other forms of learning, including classic learning paradigms.

Many of the pieces of the UL puzzle are now starting to fall into place, as summarised in the diagram below:

Please contact nikos@edutechassociates.net for more information.

In my last blog I considered the ambitious plans of New Zealand to use Ultra-Fast Broadband to bring better education to all its citizens.  Part of New Zealand’s Inquiry into the implementation of 21^stCentury learning is linked to consideration of school buildings.

Both New Zealand and China are dedicated to improving education, and their school buildings. In New Zealand, the Chair of the Education and Science Select Committee, Nikki Kaye, makes clear the opportunities for inspirational buildings within the one billion dollar budget for new and refurbished school buildings.  In China, the transformation of cities is astounding – and not just in Beijing and Shanghai. In Hebei Province, Baoding and Shijiazhuang have been transformed to very modern cities with populations of more than 10 million.

Both countries could do with considering the failures and occasional success of English education.  Changes in the education system are reflected in educational buildings- or a lack of change in the case of England.  This is most apparent in the English education system where hundreds of millions of pounds were spent on buildings, most of which, in the end, were simply newer versions of old buildings.  This trend is continuing, and degrading the quality of school environments by failing to future-proof new buildings.

The ambition to implement school designs better suited to the 21^st Century was not achieved in England, though the school building in the photograph above this blog shows one of the few that reflected the ambitions of Mukund Patel, the visionary leader of the Department for Education’s  Schools for the Future programme.  This failure to achieve systemic change was not the fault of architects. For example,  Alex de Rijke of dRMM created one visionary design, the Dura- the model for the school above- re- built another (Kingsdale School here), and has inspiring ideas about education buildings.  Kingsdale has the most wonderful ETFE roof, and being in this interior area is an inspiration on its own.

Here dRMM’s Clapham Manor School shows how a stunning modern school can complement a much older building- the Odd Fellows Hall.  Indeed, I would suggest that the school will, in the end, become the more important of the two.  It has the visionary quality that characterizes dRMM as a practice, and the quality of finish that is breathtaking.

New Zealand is fortunate in having a clear link between education and science in its political structure, as new science will help solve some problems in schools.  There is much that is wrong with school buildings- they are usually too small, have poor acoustics, bad air quality, and low light levels –  yet there are solutions based on good science and engineering to resolve these issues.  Having education linked to science may help New Zealand find good solutions.

It would be fitting for New Zealand, with one of the world’s best environments, could create world-leading school designs that enhance learning for students, and the digital network for the country as a whole.   Such an achievement would help the country become a leading example of good educational practice through embracing the future- rather than rebuilding the past.

One of the major changes in the education world is the rise of the Western Pacific in international studies of student achievement. The education systems that seem to perform well – Shanghai, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and New Zealand all have shown a willingness to overcome difficulties to improve outcomes. Most of these countries have made significant economic gains as well. Is it the turn of New Zealand to transform the experience of their students for the better?

Thanks to Kaitlyn Cole from Onlineuniversities.com for drawing our attention to this article:

http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2012/07/20-exciting-teaching-tools-tomorrow/

The article covers a broad spectrum of new and emerging technologies and is well worth a read.

The central proposition to this paper is that using data generated by the growing use of E-Examination and E-Assessment process offers significant value for increasing the effectiveness of the schooling systems.

Schooling system needs to constantly innovate and evolve.  This paper sets out a vision for how schooling leaders can make learning even more effective by personalising the learning experience for all school students – without introducing unmanageable complexities.

The implementation of the key recommendations of this paper should deliver the following benefits:

1. Effective learning – Intervention is about developing virtuous cycles of learning, tailored to individual needs
2. Deep insights – using deep analytics, new and unpredicted patterns can be found that can help inform decision makers about where to focus investments
3. Timely intervention – whilst E-Assessment takes essential “rear view mirror” snapshots of learning performance, predictive analytics can be used to constantly steer students in the right direction, maximizing the chances of doing well in assessment and examinations

Three interdependent processes combine to deliver a personalized learning experience:

• Assess
• Analyse
• Intervene

Figure 1. The three main components of a Personalised Learning Platform

Ongoing assessment from a range of sources is used to gather data about how individuals and groups of students are learning. This data is analyzed to help target students with tailored learning, and to make decisions that lead to increased effectiveness. Using data, interventions can be set up do deal with issues such as reducing drop-out rates; selecting the most effective ways of improving reading and mathematics; and dealing with risks before they become a problem. Ultimately interventions can be tailored for individuals and groups of students.

Each of these processes are interconnected in multiple ways -

Figure 2. Logical connections between functions

The white paper explores these processes and how they integrate and can be implemented.

Download the white paper here: Assess. Analyse. Intervene. From E-Assessment to Personalised Learning

Thanks to Quoc Bui; Horng Shya Chua; Puay San Ng and Edgar Ferrer Gil.

Answer – “primary school children at the book fair in Osasco, Sao Paulo, Brazil”

Osasco Book Fare, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Thanks to my friends at Planeta Educacao, I was thrilled to be part of the launch of O Ensino à Velocidade do Pensamento - the Portuguese version of Schooling at the Speed of Thought - at the Osasco book fair recently. The day started with thousands of children descending on an open market for books. Each child was given a $BRL30 voucher (~$15USD) and, after being entertained by clowns, let loose to choose from thousands of books. The fair was organised just before the holidays, so every child in the school district had a book to read whilst on holidays.

The logistics were breath-taking – 4,000 children a day over 8 days. Coaches would pull up, then children would get into line, watch clowns perform, sing songs, then run off to see what they could find. This was followed-up with reading sessions. It was organised chaos, but wonderful evidence of the children’s strong desire to read and learn.

I stopped to find out what one boy had chosen – a book about dinosaurs. Jokingly, I offered him two copies of “O Ensino à Velocidade do Pensamento” for his dinosaur book – he politely declined my offer, and who can blame him.

The launch itself was great fun too. First a book signing session and impromptu talk with a group of teachers and the Secretary of Education for Osasco , Professora Marinalva de Oliveira

The main event included a demonstration of use of Kinect for learning at home by families…

… after that, came a short speech…

… and the event was completed with a panel discussion

From left to right – Andreia Julieta – Teaching Supervisor; Professora Marinalva de Oliveira – Secretary of Education of Osasco; Professora Maria de Lourdes Neves – Director of Education of Osasco; Elisete Baruel – Director of Education, Planeta Educação.

I’d like to sincerely thank my friends and colleagues at Planeta Educacao for making this possible – Luis Namura; Roberta Bento; Aline Tosini; Renata Martins Dias; Manoela da Costa and Elisete Baruel; and to Carmen Nigro for excellent interpretation.

Slides are here: O Ensino a Velocidade do Pensamento 

O Ensino à Velocidade do Pensamento is available from the Planeta Educacao store – http://loja.planetaeducacao.com.br/

Thanks to all those who came to my workshop and keynote speech at the III Forum Microsoft Educacion, Madrid (#IIIForumEdu). This was a really well organised and well attended event – and thanks to my Microsoft colleagues, especially Juan Ramon Alegret Crespi; Maria Zamorano Alberruche; Irene Ocaña del Rey; Lola Chacon Gutierrez; and Fernando Bocigas Palma.

Here’s a link to the OneNote file complete with on-the-fly annotations:

Schooling at the Speed of Thought keynote

Korea’s remarkable technology driven growth has also been accompanied by improvements in social equity. How? Investment in human capital – as evidenced by their PISA results in recent years.

South Korea is well known for their results in the OECD PISA survey

Korea rides high in PISA (pic c/o Wikipedia)

Unlike Finland, whose high ranking in PISA can be attributed to excellent public schooling, Korea’s investment in human capital is significantly influenced by private investment. Parents with school-age children spend close to 25 percent of their income on education and all parents spend a large portion of their income on supplementary educational materials. Private education cost 3.95% of GDP in 2006. According to colleagues in South Korea, students acquire about 30 percent of their formal learning through their schooling, and the rest through supplementary measures.  

So what motivates parents to spend such large amounts of money on private tutoring outside the state schooling system? The main driver is that education is viewed as being crucial for success. At three or four years old, Korean children begin the long and strenuous race to higher education where Science and Engineering dominate.

Examination time is a very serious times of the year and the whole pattern of society changes. Businesses often start at 10AM to accommodate parents who have helped their children study late into the night and on the evenings before exams. The entire schooling system is geared to college entrance, so the curriculum of most schools is structured around the content of the entrance examination.

The Korean government spends generously on education (4.5% GDP in 1986); children spend a lot of days in school (220 days in Korea vs 180 days in the US); and school children work very long hours too. While these factors help with test scores, Korea is remarkably inefficient at a PISA criterion known as “study effectiveness”. South Korea ranks only 24th out of 30 developed nations in this measure. Top in study effectiveness is Finland, where time in school and hours spent studying is significantly less than Korea.

While many if not most other countries look on Korean performance on international tests like PISA with envy, in Korea itself there appears to be an intense pressure to do better, and in this highly technocratic country, its little surprise that technology is seen to be an important component.  

Technology Developments

Korea has been ‘computerizing’ schools for the last 15 years or so, and was the first country in the world to provide high-speed internet access to every primary, junior, and high school. ICT is also an increasing focus in the Korean Government’s education strategy, and in recognition of their progress, Korea won 1^st prize from UNESCO for ICT in Education in 2007. So you’d be forgiven for thinking that this lead to Korea coming top in PISA Digital Literacy tests in June 2011 – however computer use is often restricted to teachers presenting information to students.

The real reason Korean students do so well in Digital Literacy is the intense use of technology after school – in Internet cafes, “cram schools” and the home where children can use the world’s fastest home Internet connections – on average 100 Mbps now, and with plans to increase this to 1 Gbps.

Several government initiatives have been set up to bridge the gap between the different levels of effectiveness of learning at home and at school. The overall goal of Government ICT initiatives is to ensure that by 2014 Korean school children will be competent with 21st century skills and are talented at innovating with future digital technology.

Much of the government’s initiative in ICT is channelled through KERIS – a Government Research Institute that acts as the country’s national ICT/education agency. KERIS’ Future Schools programme has conducted 39 research projects and 14 development projects focussed on new learning methods based on new technology. 

Infrastructure Development

The current priority from a budget standpoint is the acquisition of hardware and modernising class facilities. By 2010 there was a ratio of 5 students per PC – the intent of this investment was to support the development of creativity and problem-solving.

IT Expenditure Priorities

A second budget priority is to increase the number of classrooms that have been transformed to achieve “ubiquitous-learning” (u-learning).

Digital Textbook Project

KERIS has been piloting ‘digital textbooks’ in various forms in preparation for the move by 2015 to using digital textbooks in all schools in all subjects at all levels. The idea is that digital textbooks will be accessed/viewed on many different types of devices, from tablets to desktops to laptops to phones.

Cyber Home Learning System

In an attempt to reduce the cost of private education KERIS also developed content for the Cyber Home Learning System. Launched in 2004, CHLS is an online learning service supporting student’s self-directed learning. Click here to find out more – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF8XdvA4ajk

Cyber Home Learning System

The next generation of the CHLS will include community, e-portfolio and analytical functions.

Next Generation of CHLS

EDUNET

KERIS set up and operates EDUNET, an educational information service which distributes a diverse range of high quality educational content. Content ranges from sound, photo, image, animation, module and video and is all specified by curriculum. As of October, 2010, the number of EDUNET users reached 6.17 million out of a school student population of 7.7m. To see a sample of the content, view a short video here. 

Education Broadcasting Services on the Internet (EBSi)

A service that has seen a sharp rise in growth recently is EBSi. This is where key education broadcasting service assets are made available for download. In 2010, daily usage of video-clips of lectures was 574,461, a 78% increase from the same period of the previous year.  

Teacher Training

Advances have been made too in teacher training. Not only are increasing numbers of teachers licenced to teach ICT, distance education training based on e-Learning has become the core method of teachers training. Distance learning is available to students too via “Air and Correspondence High School”.

NEIS (National Education Information Service)

The Korean Government is keen to develop the use of data systems in education. In a drive to reduce teacher workload, an administration system called NEIS (National Education Information Service) was developed. By streamlining procedures, many administrative processes can now be done in one-step. The system connects all stakeholders of the student, to allow them to get “to Know Our Children Better”. NEIS integrates student records across a range of fields including assessments, examination and health data.

The first task in creating NEIS was to develop the physical infrastructure. The aging facilities of the overall education management centre and 16 Metropolitan and municipal education offices were replaced. 3,800 servers with databases were installed in schools and integrated into a datacentre comprising 100 servers in upstream education offices.

To help teachers adapt, training is provided, and structured guides are available on the teacher area of Edunet.

(MPOE – Metropolitan and Provincial Offices of Education)

(MEST – Ministry of Education, Science and Technology)

After infrastructure, the next key ingredient was Business Process Reengineering and Information Strategy Planning (BPR/ISP) for constructing the business management system for the MPOEs. A transmission system for electronic funds transfer (EFT) system was created at the Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute.

The School Information Disclosure System allows anyone including students and parents to easily receive information about schools. The system is designed to increases parents and the local community’s interest and participation in the schooling system. In addition, the government and the Offices of Education are expected to boost policy achievements by establishing even more efficient policies through situational reality analysis of school units using the School Information Disclosure System.

Where next?

Whilst Korea is developing one of the best IT infrastructures in the world, there are three key areas that need focus:

• According to “Adapting Education to the Information Age”, Software Infrastructure in Korea is behind to developed countries and a change is required to develop capacity in this area.
• A second area for development is lifelong learning. 28% of adults participated in the lifelong learning in 2009, which is lower than major advanced countries – eg EU average participation rate is 37.9%.
• Perhaps the most important area of focus is 21^st century skills. Korea has few programs in this area, and with Communication and Collaboration now part of the PISA 2012 framework, this area is in need of development.

To learn more:

Excellent blog article by Michael Trucano with links to in-depth resources: http://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/e-learning-in-korea-in-2011-and-beyond

E-assessment is becoming an increasingly hot topic, with an increasing number of governments around the world taking their first steps in this area. Whilst e-assessment has alway been an option in Learning Management Systems, formalised testing at national scale is a relatively new phenomenon. This article explores the opportunities, risks and architectures associated with delivering e-assessment at scale.

For the clarity, the term “e-assessment” is used here as the collective noun for electronic delivery of High Stakes and Low Stakes testing, diagnostics and examinations. The term also covers both summative and formative testing.

Norway – with over 800,000 school-age students – was the first country to implement national level e-assessment. As part of a national programme for improving education, and after successful trials in 2009 where students took examinations on their laptops, all the national tests for Reading, English and Math are now digital. A large part of Norway’s exams are also conducted digitally.

Log-on screen for students taking national e-assessments in Norway

Students enrol in the exam at least one week before they sit it. On the day of the exam they are given a user-name and password. The PCs that they take the assessments on are owned by the students but provided by the school, so there is a minimum specification for the hardware and browser (HTML 5). It’s acceptable for students to use materials that they have stored on their Hard Drive or a USB but not to gain help over the internet. Schools are 100% responsible for ensuring compliance with the rules, and E-assessments are monitored by a combination of teachers and software.

Arild Stangeland from The Directorate for Education and Training at the Norway Ministry of Education explains that the Norwegian system breaks down into the following components:

• Administration of examinations, registration and results/reports
• Electronic national tests and diagnostic tests
• E-examinations
• Collaboration Solution for preparing exams and tests
• E-processes for preparation of materials for exams for the students

Each of these components have a separate technical architecture supported by a large stack of applications written in .NET, Java, and Flash, and maintained by the The Directorate for Education and Training. Several hundred servers are used, and BizTalk Server is at the centre of the architecture to co-ordinate traffic between different systems. A locally produced Learning Management System is used to deliver the assessments.

E-assessments in Georgia

Another country that has implemented a national level e-examination system is Georgia, in Eastern Europe. Microsoft’s Shota Murtskhvaladze reports that school graduation exams are now delivered through a “Computer Adaptive Testing” (CAT) system. Last year, 50,000 schoolchildren took the school-leaving exams in 8 subjects in 1520 public and private schools within an eight-day-long timeframe. The solution was developed by an agency of the MoE’s National Examinations Center.

There are a number or drivers behind the move towards e-examination:

1. Cost – the English examination system cost ~ $1bn in 2009. Much of this is tied up in paper-based processes – printing, delivering, collecting and scanning papers.
2. Flexibility – the potential for going beyond what students can physically write on a paper.
3. Speed and accuracy - the time from sitting the assessment to getting an accurate the result in front of those who need to know is compressed with e-assessment.

Whilst the benefits of moving entirely to electronic assessment are clear, some countries are using technology to manage individual component parts.

The assessment division of British company RM Education handles a range of tasks for a large number of UK and international examination and assessment boards. They deliver authoring, delivery, marking and results services. For example, the company carries out on-screen marking of scanned paper scripts for the International Baccalaureate.

RM Assessement have a range of service offerings

Since 2009, RM Assessment has been working in partnership with Cambridge Assessment, the University’s international exams group, to enable e-assessment in more than 3,000 test venues across 18 countries.

In Romania in 2011, SIVECO built a solution to publish the results of National High School exams. The solution produced 30 reports showing the results for 200,000 candidates and had to deal with high peak usage in a small time-frame – just 2 days.

To handle the peaks, SIVECO used Cloud technologies – Windows Azure in particular.  In this project the Romanian Ministry of Education gained ample processing power, eliminated downtime, and avoided spending $100,000 for a comparable on-premises infrastructure. Romania is far from alone in experiencing peaks in data generation and process - the whole assessment industry experiences significant peaks in demand and load during one or two months of the year, which makes Cloud technologies an ideal candidate for e-assessment solutions.

SIVECO used Azure to handle peak data loads

Cloud technologies are also being used to support e-assessment in Columbia. There, the Instituto Colombiano para la Evaluación de la Educación (ICFES) administers standardised tests to students and has used Cloud technologies to reduce costs and better manage online queries when scores are posted. ICFES moved to a Windows Azure platform in partnership with Asesoftware, and has cut costs by 80% and provided students a faster and more reliable solution.

Taking this a step further, the New South Wales Department of Education and Culture - the largest School District in the Southern Hemisphere – has moved to a complete cloud based e-assessment system for Year 9 Science Standards diagnostic testing (ESSA tests). Working in partnership with Australian company Janison, 65,000 students were tested last year in a comprehensive diagnostic assessment.

Part of New South Wales’s ESSA tests – c/o NSW DEC

Tests online revealed much more about how students were thinking, enabling the NSW DEC to provide high quality advice on how to improve teaching and learning. There were other benefits too - saving $200,000 on server infrastructure costs, saving printing and distribution costs, and gaining a week on marking time over previous years.

Risks

So if it’s that easy to do, why aren’t more countries doing it? The main barrier is risk. An assessment system failing during the critical period is headline news, as is inequity and inaccuracy. Many of these risks, however, are inherent in paper based systems too. There are plenty of examples of the wrong papers being delivered to schools, and papers getting lost on return to the examination centres. Like all mission critical IT systems, the key is to architect the system with risk mitigation as a top priority.

Architectures

A basic building-block view of an e-assessment system looks like this:

Key functions include:

A simplified Azure enabled workflow looks like this:

Using Azure as a key component in delivering e-assessment at scale. This is the kind of approach used by Janison for the NSW DEC ESSEA assessments.

1. Exam/Assessment Board produces and signs-off assessment content collaboratively.
2. Assessment content is pushed into the Cloud and distributed via a Content Delivery Network
3. Assessment content is cached at school/exam center level after the first student has viewed a particular resource. As candidates enter the examination centre, they are given a username and password on a card.
4. Just before the assessment starts, policies are enforced on the candidate’s client computer, and the assessment content is cached either in a dedicated application or on the browser. The candidate’s response data is cached locally and periodically sent to the Cloud via the school level cache.
5. In the Cloud, the candidate’s data sits in a queue, and is then stored in flat tables.
6. Encrypted data from the Cloud is sent to a data center for longer-term storage and processing and in relational databases. Once all the candidate’s response data is taken from the Cloud to the data warehouse, and the Cloud application is stopped.
7. Markers grade the work and ensure leveling and normalisation.
8. Results are collated, reported and analysed.
9. Results are passed on to relevant agencies for recognition and certificate distribution.

Security and Equity

It’s crucial that candidates are all able to use devices of the same minimal specification, which makes a straight BYOD policy – where any device is acceptable – a difficult proposition.

Enforcing policies on the client computer is a key component. Until recently, attaining ‘lock-down’ would have required each computer to join a domain. Whilst having a Domain and Active Directory joined client computer has many advantages, there is another approach -  a solution developed by FullArmor called GPAnywhere. This allows “portable” policies to be created from Group Policy Objects and be applied to any end point including a Virtual Application. This means that any device running Windows can have an Assessment policy applied to them.

FullArmor’s GPAnywhere

What next?

Another approach to delivery being considered by some is VDI. The ability to be able to push a virtual assessment desktop to a device and lock it down is appealing as it is potentially a simpler approach. However, there are continuity of service risks with VDI which have yet to be fully tested.

assessment is in its infancy, but many leading examination and assessment authorities are looking carefully into what’s next in this space.

CAT

Computerised Adaptive Testing (CAT) is a form of computer-based test that adapts to the examinee’s ability level. Medical students at St George’s, University of London using CAT based e-assessment tools are asked to make decisions along a branched narrative in which information and choices available at a later stage depend on the choices the student made earlier.

ACARA - the Australian Curriculum and Assessment and Reporting Authority – takes this a step further and are talking about how to provide candidates with branched routes through the assessment so they get appropriate recognition for what they have learned. A student who struggles with a question or task can be routed along a less demanding pathway, whilst a more able or better prepared student can be routed along a more demanding pathway – both are able to get the best out of the assessment process. Test-takers also do not waste their time attempting items that are too hard or trivially easy.

Simulations

The New South Wales DEC were able to exploit interactivity when they ran their science tests online. Being able to use interactivity in an assessment opens up a wide range of testing options – for example, asking candidates to build or construct something, conduct virtual experiments, use haptics to test dexterity, or develop an animated scenario. None of these options are practical in a paper and pencil assessment.

21st Century Skills

Whilst we will see paper-based assessment for a long time yet, the pressure is on to find ways of assessing 21st Century skills such as creativity, problem solving, communication and collaboration. Problem Solving is now part of PISA 2012 framework Also, ATC21 – the 21st Century Skills assessment project – is doing some very interesting work in the area of collaborative assessment – www.youtube.com/atc21s One thing is certain – pencil and paper testing won’t help much in diagnosing and assessing whether students have acquired 21st Century Skills or not, so its reasonable to conclude that assessment has a big future.

Conclusion

E-assessment has come a long way in a very short time and is one of the last main barriers to the wider adoption of ICT in schooling. It’s clear that Cloud technology is changing the game here - not only enabling lower cost of service, but also opening the possibility of global e-assessment, with assessment and Examination Boards being able to offer their services to anyone on the planet. With the advent of better biometrics, and new ways of supervising assessments remotely perhaps the most exciting prospect is the notion of assessments being available at any point in one’s lifetime, not just at specified times in the calendar.

Practically everyone on the planet takes many examinations and assessment over their lifetime, so the prospects of this age-old process being made more fair, accurate, helpful, available and engaging are very exciting indeed.

Additional Information

• Janison blog on ESSA: http://blogs.janison.com.au/janison-blogs/essa/Video
• Case study on ESSA: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000009354
• Janison’s CAFe dashboard shows the statistics when running the ESSA assessments: http://cafemetrics.cloudapp.net/essalive/run

• More information about national testing http://www.udir.no/Vurdering/Nasjonale-prover/
• Sample tasks: http://www.udir.no/Vurdering/Nasjonale-prover/Innhold-NP/Eksempeloppgaver/Eksempeloppgaver-nasjonale-prover.
• User manual: http://www.udir.no/PageFiles/46582/Brukerveiledning_PAS_PGS_Nasjonaleprover_Vers_1-00_Nynorsk.pdf?epslanguage=no

• http://www.xplora.org/ww/en/pub/insight/thematic_dossiers/articles/e_assessment/eassessment2.htm
• http://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/ca/digitalAssets/198405_MH_ALT-C_Poster.pdf

Azure

http://www.windowsazure.com

Thanks to:

Arild Stangeland, The Directorate for Education and Training, Norway Ministry of Education

Wayne Houlden, Aaron Wittman, Caroline Thompson and Niels Grootscholten, Janison, Australia

Eric Jamieson, Robert Cordaiy, Joanne Sim, Jim Sturgiss, and Penny Gill, from New South Wales DEC, Australia

Peter Adams, ACARA, Australia

Steve Harrington and Dave Patrick, RM Assessment

Alexandru Cosbuc and Florian Ciolacu, Siveco

Bob Chung, FullArmor

Horng Shya Chua and Puay San Ng, Microsoft Singapore; Bjørnar Hovemoen, Microsoft Norway; Shota Murtskhvaladze, Microsoft Georgia; Teo Milev and Ksenia Filippova, Microsoft Central and Eastern Europe; and Brad Tipp, Corporate HQ.