Computer-based Assessment - Advantages

Advantages

E-assessment is becoming widely used. It has many advantages over traditional (paper-based) assessment. The advantages include:

1. lower long-term costs
2. instant feedback to students
3. greater flexibility with respect to location and timing
4. improved reliability (machine marking is much more reliable than human marking)
5. improved impartiality (machine marking does not 'know' the students so does not favour nor make allowances for minor errors)
6. greater storage efficiency - tens of thousands of answer scripts can be stored on a server compared to the physical space required for paper scripts
7. enhanced question styles which incorporate interactivity and multimedia.

There are also disadvantages. E-assessment systems are expensive to establish and not suitable for every type of assessment (such as extended response questions). The main expense is not technical; it is the cost of producing high quality assessment items - although this cost is identical when using paper-based assessment.

The best examples follow a Formative Assessment structure and are called "Online Formative Assessment". This involves making an initial formative assessment by sifting out the incorrect answers. The author/teacher will then explain what the pupil should have done with each question. It will then give the pupil at least one practice at each slight variation of sifted out questions. This is the formative learning stage. The next stage is to make a Summative Assessment by a new set of questions only covering the topics previously taught. Some will take this even further and repeat the cycle such as BOFA Online 11 plus papers which is aimed at the eleven plus exam set