Abstract:

Open Educational Resources (OERs) offer new opportunities for learning, however adoption and uptake has implications for assessment and recognition of competences gained outside formal learning settings. An increase in non-formal and informal learning can be expected to enhance the demand for assessment and recognition of these competences (Yuan et al 2008). Research has highlighted the relatively common absence in OERs of both formal and informal assessment practices, either formative or summative. The formative nature of any implicit or explicit assessment in OERs needs to be examined and evaluated to investigate whether they allow ‘closing the loop’ (Sadler 1989). Since formative assessment is interleaved with the teaching and learning process it is important to examine how OER e-assessment tools are integrated with other learning and teaching resources and whether they are (or have the potential to be) used formatively.
The main objective of this paper is to explore how e-assessment and any formative attributes can be embedded/designed in OERs. The second objective is to investigate what types of assessment OERs have been developed in different disciplines. Overall, it seems that OER e-assessment is not substantially different from those found or offered in proprietary settings, but open resources in the area are important in destabilizing didactic nature of transmissive OERs that are mainly focused on content.
My investigation examines a typology of OER e-assessment practices and tools in different disciplines and how they contribute to student learning by looking at the processes of assessing knowledge, skills and competencies gained through learning with OER and whether these processes and their attributes are implicit or explicit in the design of OER. In addition, e-Assessment OERs and how they are integrated into the learning process, e.g. by assessment linked to other OERs or to traditional ‘proprietory’ learning and teaching materials.

The paper will discuss:
• The evaluation of a significant set of OERs from UK and international repositories in a multidisciplinary context to establish approaches to assessment.
• The evaluation of the quality of these assessment OERs and the approaches in embedding dialogue with the learner, whether feedback is included and how they allow ‘closing the loop’.
• Whether there is an appropriate format for e-assessment OERs.
• Good practice in designing e-assessment tools in OERs.

References:

Li Yuan, Mac Neill, S., Kraan W., Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources. JISC CETIS.
Sadler, D. R. (1989) Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science, Vol. 18, pp: 119-144.

Keywords:

Open Educational Resources, assessment, e-assessment.