An authentic e-assessment task

Abstract

Assessment is integral to ensuring whether an academic programme has achieved its learning outcomes, as well as an essential means of providing the crucial evidence necessary for seeking and maintaining accreditation from authorities. A major element of any e-learning strategy, is e-assessment. In this digital era, academics should be encouraged to envisage various forms of e-assessment and then build and evaluate them using student feedback. A combination of information technologies together with e-learning strategies can enhance the learning and teaching process by supporting traditional, authentic, and alternative assessment practices. Benefits of e-assessments may be convenience and flexibility to learn anytime and anywhere. However, practitioners need to assess whether those benefits contribute to student learning, that students should not be disadvantaged by any e-assessment procedure and these assessments should be valid and reliable. This paper reports the findings of whether authentic e-assessments enhance student learning in comparison to the traditional assessment methods. Using a descriptive research method, this study investigated the perceptions of a group of students that were exposed to both an authentic e-assessment and the traditional closed-book assessment methods. Data were solicited from participants using a questionnaire survey instrument. A comparison of student perceptions between the different forms of assessments revealed that they are very keen on authentic e-assessments as it relates to situations experienced in the real-world. These assessments also measure the students' ability to apply the knowledge or skills, but more importantly, that it is used as a vehicle for student learning.