This week I kicked off the first in a series of workshops on eAssessment as Professional Development for Vocational Teaching staff. We discussed at length some of the strategies required to ensemble quality online assessments that work for teachers, learners and within the compliance framework of the AQTF. The participants have included TAFE teachers, School teachers, Private RTO Trainers, Department Auditors and Technical Support staff from the VET sector.
One of the hot discussions coming out of these workshops is the concept of Authentication in eLearning, the big questions being, How do we know WHO has actually done an online test? the bigger question for me is, What Authentication methods are acceptable, reasonable, flexible and fair?
Signatures can be forged and there are many way of cheating Biometric Technologies that we are seeing emerge, such as the facial recognition tool demonstrated in this video from Nokia.
If we are going to start taking images/video of learners and their workplace or homes, to Authenticate eAssessment, we need to consider the privacy issues that will no doubt be raised by individuals and organisations. Can we just accept that a digital signature is good enough, or even better than the pen signatures we've always accepted?
The 25Workshop series has been funded by the Flexible Learning Framework and encompasses 25 PD days across Qld on the topics of mLearning, eAssessment, Blended Delivery, Evaluation of eLearning and eBooks. See the 25Workshops Registration Page for full details.
