Assessment in an Online Learning Environment for Distance Edu 3

THE ADVANTAGES OF USING ONLINE ASSESSMENT

Many universities, colleges and educational institutes adopted online assessment, in order to
obtain develop, accurate and faster method to assess students, rather than traditional measure
(paper-test). This section presents the advantages of using online assessment in different domains:
student, teacher, institution, in educational aims.

A. Student
Some students prefer online assessment, because they can have more control, friendly interfaces
and test as games and simulations, which resemble learning environment and recreational
activities. It is, also, fast and easy to use. Online assessment provides immediate feedback
comparing with paper test, which helps to improve the learning level. It helps the students in
remote area to learn and assess in their locations and it can take it any time, which provide
flexibility for students to have the exams.

THE ADVANTAGES OF USING ONLINE ASSESSMENT

B. Teacher
The paper test consumes time from teacher to correct each paper, but using online
assessment will save the teacher time, online assessment helps the teacher to
improve the quality of feedback for the students. Online assessment enables the
teacher to track the students’ performance and make analysis across many
assessment results. The direct feedback from Online assessment allows the teacher
to find the misconceptions, which are not clear for the students and solve them
before the final exam. Using Online assessment can reduce the teachers’ burden to
assess large number of students.

THE ADVANTAGES OF USING ONLINE ASSESSMENT

C. Institution
Increasing the number of students, which increase the demand of fast and accurate method for
assessment. Also, an institution needs timely results to arrange for places for the appropriately qualified
applicants, this can accrue easily using online assessment. Moreover, using online assessment decreases
the cost for institution to assess the students, as the time is greatly reduced. Furthermore, online
assessment has its own set of security, which provides the questions and denies the student the possibility
to copy questions. In addition, it includes checking identification and password verification to ensure the
identity of student. It also assists to reduce student-cheating by providing different question in different
order.

D. Educational Aims
Online assessment supports educational goals, by supporting high ability thinking skills such as critiquing,
reflection on cognitive processes and facilitate group work projects. Moreover, it supports the new
educational goals, that focused on problem solving using mathematics, science and supported by
information technology, for instant understanding and presenting the problem, especially in
mathematical and scientific literacy. Moreover, it provides more accurate results than paper test, by
adaptive testing, which change the difficulty of the test depend on the user response, by increasing the
difficulty if he/she responds correctly and decrease the difficulty if he/she chooses the wrong answer.

ONLINE ASSESSMENT CHALLENGES

Implementation of online assessment in higher education could face some
challenges.
• Inexperienced student with computer or with the online assessment
process. Students need training at the beginning to be familiar with online
assessment.

• Accessibility of computer and internet. As a solution for this problem, the
institutions should provide a labs with full equipment and internet access for
those students.

• Poor technical infrastructure development along with other affecting
factors such as electricity supply, server speed, internet speed may have an
influence on student’s performance.

ONLINE ASSESSMENT CHALLENGES

• The difficulty in scoring and correcting questions with student open
response such as explain things. The computer will be appropriate for
questions that have well defined answers - such as short answer
questions.

• Some teachers unfamiliar with technology, or most of them use
online assessment for first time. Therefore, teachers need training to
be confident in using the Online assessment system.

ONLINE ASSESSMENT CHALLENGES

• It is more difficult in areas, such as reading the text and answering
the questions based upon it. The screen size, concentration span along
with focus have a direct impact on answering correctly.

• If the questions from online assessment are the same, then there is a
threat of sharing the questions from the student who attended earlier
with the students who will appearing in future.