31. Making Online
Assessment Work for Students in an Entry-Level Accounting Course
Presenter: Sally Aisbitt, The Open University Business School
Description: The incremental
nature of learning accounting means that regular testing of understanding
facilitates the accumulation of knowledge and understanding, by ensuring
elementary material is fully comprehended before students move on to more
advanced material. Professional accounting and training bodies in the U.K. have
harnessed the power of IT in generating different tests of equivalent
difficulty to allow asynchronous testing. Universities may perceive online
assessment (OLA) as attractive, because it is considered to be cost-effective
and demonstrates that they are embracing technical advances and their courses
must, by implication, be up to date. At the Open University Business School
(OUBS) we have used OLA to encourage the learning of basic principles in an
introductory accounting course and to prepare the students for this form of
testing in their subsequent professional careers. The feedback from students on
the benefits of OLA demonstrates that it plays an important role in their
learning strategy for the course. However, to achieve its pedagogical
objectives, OLA needs to be carefully managed and this can be expensive in
terms of capital outlay and the human resources needed to support the
system.
This poster session will share the
lessons learned in OUBS to contribute to the body of knowledge of this
development in teaching, learning, and assessment. Our experience suggests that
critical issues to be addressed include:
- Infrastructure-reliability and
security;
- Running OLA with other University
programs and systems-will they work? Do routines need to be changed? (e.g.,
back up frequently, writing code to link the OLA system with the student
records system);
- Writing and testing robust questions
suitable for OLA;
- Providing feedback to OLA;
and
- Support—the level of IS and
pastoral support students require for OLA exceeds most teachers'
expectations.
This leads to the conclusion that
investment in OLA, given the current "state of the art," is
worthwhile only from the university's cost/benefit point of view if there are
large numbers of students and the course has a long and stable life (i.e.,
questions from a bank can be reused many times).
