e-Assessments are among the top 7 trends of Edtech this 2018. More than simply digitizing assessments that you give to your students, more than making them pass the exams on their laptops, it is about improving learning and simplifying exam creation, grading.

How does it improve learning? By offering the tools to the professors of your institution that will help them make better exams, more often and implement a better skill follow-up of their students.

Then, add a learning analytics tool to an e-Exam solution, you’ll understand why some students have difficulties, why they succeed, if there’s a problem coming from course content, you’ll even predict which type of assessment is more adapted to the students. e-Assessments are key to the implementation of continuous improvement in universities, corporate universities, business schools, in fact, any kind of educational institution!

Choosing e-Exam is right. But implementing an e-Exam solution can be difficult as previously said (lien vers précédent article). To be sure you’ll get it right, they’re 6 steps you must follow.

1. Everyone must know what an e-Exam is, even though they’re not testing it yet

Communicate

Changing your assessment processes is as crucial as being accredited. You need everyone to know what it is and what are the consequences. Don’t worry it’s not as complicated as an accreditation process. Nevertheless, it changes the way your institution works whether we talk about instructors, students or the administration.

Plan

Once everyone is aware of the coming changes, plan the adoption of the solution. How are you going to test the solution, who are going to test it?

Process

Map your processes. Assign roles to exam creation, grading, who’s going to proctor during exams, who’s going to analyze results? How will get feedback and from whom?

2. Don’t be scared by conservatism, it takes a little time to change habits

Be sure of it, you’ll receive bad reviews from a certain number of people due to the change of habits or due to misunderstandings or simply because they don’t like it.

It’s normal, it takes a little time before everyone an e-Exam solution. We calculated that after 3-5 tests/ exams, the large majority of an institution adopt the solution.

In the case of schools (higher education), we found that the most conservative population would be a minority of professors having difficulties using digital tools. The reject expressed was, in fact, a consequence of a lack of formation.

3. If you can test it on a language course first…

Language learning is the best kind, of course, you can run tests on, using e-Exam solutions. The obvious reasons are that:

• classes are generally smaller, which facilitates the adoption from students and the collection of their feedbacks
• students in language classes must take a lot of tests, from simple MCQs to writing and oral expression assessments
• you’ll thus have results fast and be sure you can go to next phase

4. Then on a Program, before implementing it to your whole school

Implementing an e-Exam solution to a whole program is the next phase. Nevertheless, do not target a program because it’s “short”. Here you must test it on a program on which you can measure improvement from your students and professors.

5. Ask for support

You can’t be alone, ask regularly support to the people who brought you the solution. They know the solution better than you do. And generally, it is notably for us, support, meetings and formations are included in the services. Use that help to better use and personalise the solution according to your needs.

6. Make sure you have constant feedback to benchmark the evolution

Students and professors feedbacks are extremely precious in order to entertain a continuous improvement of your learning quality. How can you improve e-Exams, how can you better understand your students and professors needs without feedbacks? Must you change of digital provider? Must you focus on Learning Analytics? Try to get as much feedback as possible.

If you follow these steps, first you’ll ensure a scalable improvement of the quality of your learning processes. Second, you’ll ensure that your students learn better. But hey! We’re here to help you too!