Assessment for complex learning resources: Development and validation of an integrated model

Today's e-learning systems meet the challenge to provide interactive, personalized environments that support self-regulated learning as well as social collaboration and simulation. At the same time assessment procedures have to be adapted to the new learning environments by moving from isolated summative assessments to integrated assessment forms. Therefore, learning experiences enriched with complex didactic resources - such as virtualized collaborations and serious games - have emerged. In this extension of [1] an integrated model for e-assessment (IMA) is outlined, which incorporates complex learning resources and assessment forms as main components for the development of an enriched learning experience. For a validation the IMA was presented to a group of experts from the fields of cognitive science, pedagogy, and e-learning. The findings from the validation lead to several refinements of the model, which mainly concern the component forms of assessment and the integration of social aspects. Both aspects are accounted for in the revised model, the former by providing a detailed sub-model for assessment forms

Towards an integrated assessment model for complex learning resources: Findings from an expert validation

Today's e-Iearning systems meet the challenge to provide interactive, personalized environments that support self regulated learning as well as social collaboration and simulation. At the same time assessment procedures have to be adapted to the new learning environments by moving from isolated summative assessments to integrated assessment forms. In this paper an integrated model for assessment (lMA) is outlined, which incorporates complex learning resources and assessment forms as main components for the development of an enriched learning experience. For a validation the IMA was presented to a round of experts from the fields of cognitive science, pedagogy, and e-learning. The findings from the validation lead to several refinements of the model, which mainly concern the component forms of assessment and the integration of social aspects. Both aspects are accounted for in the revised model, the former by providing a detailed sub-model for assessment forms

Assessment in serious games: An enhanced approach for integrated assessment forms and feedback to support guided learning

Over the last 100 years, the learning process has changed from being repetitive to a new form of learning based on understanding, independency, learners' empowerment and skills improvement. Game-based learning is an example of these new forms of learning in which experiential learning and guided intuitive learning is advocated. As a main part of the learning process, assessment is no more considered to discriminate between students, rather than it is used to enhance students learning and encourage them for further progress and success. In the new era for assessment, students play major roles in the assessment process where they participate in alternative forms of assessment based on their behavior and performance. Moreover, they are provided with timely and quality feedback to scaffold their learning process and to maintain their progress and success. This paper proposes an enhanced approach for assessment in serious games through which instructors can define assessment rules to guide students through dynamic feedback. A proof-of-concept is developed and first findings depict the applicability of providing dynamic assessment and feedback in stealth mode for serious games

Assessment for/as learning: Integrated automatic assessment in complex learning for self-directed learning

In the so-called 'New Culture for Assessment' assessment has become a tool for Learning. Assessment is no more considered to be isolated from the learning process and provided as embedded assessment forms. Nevertheless, students have more responsibility in the learning process in general and in assessment activities in particular. They become more engaged in: developing assessment criteria, participating in self, peer-assessments, reflecting on their own learning, monitoring their performance, and utilizing feedback to adapt their knowledge, skills, and behavior. Consequently, assessment tools have emerged from being stand-alone represented by monolithic systems through modular assessment tools to more flexible and interoperable generation by adopting the service-oriented architecture and modern learning specifications and standards. The new generation holds great promise when it comes to having interoperable learning services and tools within more personalized and adaptive e-Iearning platforms. In this paper, integrated automated assessment forms provided through flexible and SOA-based tools are discussed. Moreover, it presents a show case of how these forms have been integrated with a Complex Learning Resource (CLR) and used for self-directed learning. The results of the study show, that the developed tool for self-directed learning supports students in their learning process

Complex learning resources integrated with emerging forms of e-assessment: An empirical study

The emergence of Web 2.0 and the influence of Information and Communication Technology (lCT) have fostered e-education to be more interactive, challenging, and situated. As a result, learners felt empowered when they are engaged in collaborative learning activities and self-directed learning. New forms of integrated assessment to support students when it comes to use complex-learning resources (CLR) within learning activities have become highly required. This paper discusses an empirical study about emerging forms of assessment such as, automated assessment, peer-assessment, and group-assessment integrated with CLRs in self-directed and collaborative learning. The first findings show that students were intrinsically motivated towards this approach. Moreover, automatic and peer-assessment supported the students to achieve their learning goals

Automatic Test Item Creation in Self-Regulated Learning: Evaluating Quality of Questions in a Latin American Experience

The research area of self-regulated learning (SRL) has shown the importance of the learner’s role in their cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies to self-regulate their learning. One fundamental step is to self-assess the knowledge acquired, to identify key concepts, and review the understanding about them. In this paper, we present an experimental setting in Guatemala, with students from several countries. The study provides evaluation results from the use of an enhanced automatic question creation tool (EAQC) for a self-regulated learning online environment. In addition to assessment quality, motivational and emotional aspects, usability, and tasks value are addressed. The EAQC extracts concepts from a given text and automatically creates different types of questions based on either the self-generated concepts or on concepts supplied by the user. The findings show comparable quality of automatically and human generated concepts, while questions created by a teacher were in part evaluated higher than computer-generated questions. Whereas difficulty and terminology of questions were evaluated equally, teacher questions where considered to be more relevant and more meaningful. Therefore, future improvements should especially focus on these aspects of questions quality