Online Vocational Assessment is the terminology for managing your assessment not only online, but face-to-face and through a blended means.
Online Assessment can include eLearning objects, gamification and more. Cloud Assess, is an example of an industry led solution for the Vocational Education and Training sector and comes with an array of benefits ranging from aligning RTOs to their compliance requirements through to advanced efficiency gains and exceptional student outcomes.
Here is a list of 5 best practices of online assessment:
1. Make content engaging
Firstly and most importantly from a compliance point of view, ensure your assessments are consistent, clear and allow for all appropriate abilities to understand and complete. This will align to the Principles of Assessment, and in particular, consider “fairness”.
You can align to these guidelines easily with the Dynamic Editor within Cloud Assess. It is the most versatile platform available for authors to easily apply, “reasonable adjustment”, as well as to add some designer’s flair. There are no restricted fixed question formats.
Top tip: For example, Student and Assessor instructions can be clearly outlined at the start of an assessment in writing, audio, video or in a downloadable PDF document.
In a typical eLearning system students are sent to a resource space that is disconnected to the assessment. Use Cloud Assess as a point of difference for your end user as you can embed learning content throughout your assessment.
There are many ways to clearly display information including:
- Rich text-boxes
- Checklists
- Video, audio, images
- Banners
- Notices
- Web-links
- HTML content
- Exportable documents and so on
There are also multiple ways to gather evidence including:
- Audio to text functionality
- Checklists
- Sketch pads
- Uploads of audio, images and video
- Signatures and so on
Top tip: For multiple choice questions, switch on Auto-marking. For details on this go to the Help Centre. Add flair to your assessment by embedding media and graphics from your brand’s look and feel. Cloud Assessors can watch the Making Wow Assessments webinar in the help centre for some inspiration.
There are simply no limits to what you can do within this unique tool for designing assessments.
2. Make it easy
Good instrument design is not about making assessments easy to get a, “Satisfactory” outcome, but to make assessments easy to complete correctly.
Top tip: For example, in the context of authoring best practice, it would be most intuitive to provide 5 text boxes for a 5 answer question rather than one text box. The intent is made very clear to the student as it becomes a visual prompt. The unique Cloud Assess editor enables you to build any question format you require, and not just stick with pre-formatted inflexible question formats dictated by a typical learning management system.
3. Drive productivity with Workflows
It might seem tedious at the time to set up your Automation and workflows, but in the end it will save you hours/days/weeks and increase the productivity of your RTO.
It also enables a consistent and continuous flow of information that will enhance your student experience.
Top tip: Create due date reminder emails that will help your assessment process continue to flow. You can even set up a feedback survey as a form and automate when this is sent to your learners.
Check in with your account manager if you need some assistance with Workflows.
4. Save hours of frustration with Mapping
Mapping is a process that, if performed without Cloud Assess, can be a huge effort. Checking between multiple documents and bringing up matrices to track and check is very laborious!!
Top tip: Use Cloud Assess to map your questions directly to the unit of competency within training.gov.au. It’s then easy to spot any gaps and amendments can be made instantly. You can watch a webinar on Mapping in the help centre or read a case study here.
5. Effortlessly control your versions of assessment
Managing versions or revisions of your assessment is a potential area that can spiral out of control. With your online assessment system you can ensure you are always in the know, using the unique Revision Control and Deployment engine.
With Cloud Assess you are rest assured that the correct version of your assessment has been deployed to your learners at any time. There is no chance that an assessor is using a document on a portable drive or that a version has been edited without your knowledge. The only way to edit an assessment is to create a new revision of your master template and deploy it.
No longer waste time creating version control registers, Cloud Assess does all of that for you.
Top tip: Gain insight into your assessments by using the Stats feature. You will be able to see at a glance where assessment questions may offer opportunities for improvement. This will assist you with your commitment to continuously improving your assessments.
