Blended e-assessment: Migrating classical exams to the digital world

Existing e-assessment tools may not be a panacea to address all assessment situations, as students might find the traditional pen-and-paper approach to provide their answers more convenient than typing them online. For example, constructed response or essay-based assessments will require the active participation of students and lecturers to demonstrate and grade knowledge acquisition, reasoning, evaluation or argumentation. We propose an e-assessment solution that combines mainstream e-assessment features with the classical assessment approach where students write down their responses in paper. This approach supports both grading and access to exams anytime and anywhere. Students attend assessment sessions and are tested the traditional way, but grading, reporting of results, and statistical analysis are performed in the digital world. The proposed approach also provides support to the automated generation of assessment reports, and the administrative management of student grades and their automated transfer to student files. This tool may also be seen as a cost-effective alternative to computer-supported e-assessment, in those cases where the use of computers to perform assessment is not convenient or possible. The tool enables both formative and summative assessment, and also facilitates the transition from classical paper-and-pen-based assessment scenarios to digital ones. The tool has been validated during the last three academic years at University of Vigo, Spain. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.