This project provided
the
foundation for many future developments in Computer Assisted Assessment in
vocational education.
The overall
background to the project had two aspects, one of which was the developing
framework of National Vocational Qualifications based on industrially
defined standards of competence. Within the NVQ system, emphasis is placed
mainly on the practical demonstration of competence in the workplace, but
there was a growing realization that workplace observation needed to be
supplemented by other assessment methods. Reasons put forward for this
included:
·
Concerns about
the quality of assessment, in terms of both coverage and consistency
·
The difficulty of
covering the whole range of situations in which candidates are expected to
be competent by means of workplace observation.
·
The need to
assess underpinning knowledge and understanding which cannot necessarily be
inferred from workplace performance.
·
Pressures for
increased rigour in the assessment process
·
The heavy burden
placed on assessors, both in assessment and in recording.
·
The cost of
assessment.
·
Difficulties of
access for candidates not in employment or employed in an occupation with a
restricted range of opportunities to demonstrate competence.
Other problems were
believed to be occurring because of difficulty in interpreting the
requirements of the standards for individual competence elements or for
combinations of evidence and because of difficulties in coordinating the
standards of assessors.
One part of the project
was to conduct a survey of centres and lead bodies to discover how far their
experience confirmed that such difficulties were being encountered in
practice.
The second major aspect
to the overall background was the developments made in information
technology during the 1980s. Such developments had been harnessed to
provide imaginative computer based training packages, as well as interactive
video and other more advanced applications, and it was thought that similar
techniques might be used to solve some of the problems of assessment.
The report (Ward 1991)
identifies further development which was needed to make computer assisted
assessment techniques fully operational. Outline specifications were
prepared for projects which the Employment Department might undertake to
promote the development and implementation of computer assisted assessment.
(from the final project
report, Ward, 1991)
