SQA e-assessment seminar - Stirling

The seminar covered: the reasons for development of e-assessment, SQA's vision, SQA's existing and planned e-assessment work, issues for development, and the communication of key messages. We saw examples of, for instance, Access 2 and 3 Maths e-NABs which have been piloted (click here).

I spoke to Veronica Kirk (local SQA Account manager) and to Martyn Ware (Business manager of the Computer Assisted Assessment team at SQA). I impressed on them the desire of many within the Access Network to have a centralised (probably web-based) way of sharing (e)learning and (e)assessment/NABs. During group discussions, I also expressed the difficulties that many of our pupils have in accessing an unamended SQA NAB, even a 'sooper-dooper' e-NAB, and that we may wish any e-assessment/NABs to be amendable. These concerns were listened to and received positive feedback.

Veronica hopes to be involved in the next Access Network meeting, and Martyn has stated that he intends coming to our September meeting.

Meeting with Fionna Balfour at CALL Centre

I visited Fionna at the CALL Centre in Paterson's Land at Moray House today. We had a long chat about the fact that so many of us are producing good quality teaching resources, and amended NABs but that there seems to be no effective way of centralising these, or at least have a central contact point through which we can share.

We agreed that it might be an idea for the CALL Centre and the Access Network to get thinking about what would be the best way (and legal) to achieve this aim and whether the SQA should be approached, or kept on the sidelines.

Fionna's specific concerns centred on the fact that most resources available for Access 1, 2 and 3 are paper-based and are therefore not easily adaptable. We felt that the eventual solution will include the electronic sharing of electronically produced resources, whether that be an interactive test on Word, or even just a scan of a work-pack (which OCR software can then convert into text to be edited).

Fionna will raise the issue at her next team meeting and I mentioned that the setting up of an Access Network website was on the agenda for our May meeting and that a website may be the ideal vehicle for sharing. In the meantime, I will clarify some potential issues with Hillside's IT Consultant and possibly Veronica Kirk at the SQA.