2022 Winners and Finalists
The e-Assessment Awards Finalists Showcase Webinar Series
In the lead up to the 2022 International e-Assessment Conference, we were delighted to launch our pre-conference showcase webinars featuring all of our 2022 Awards finalists.
Lifetime Achievement Award 2022
Winner
Dr Graham Orpwood
Dr Graham Orpwood has committed decades of his life to supporting the transformation of the assessment landscape that has impacted the lives of millions of students across the world.
He has been an educator, policy researcher, curriculum and assessment specialist, and advisor for over 50 years.
His fundamental belief is that the primary purpose of assessment is to support and enhance learning. This belief underpinned his leadership in assessment projects with ministries of education, academic institutions, examination bodies, and training institutions globally.
His work has received numerous international accolades, and his publications have become go-to repositories for assessment specialists who seek guidance on designing assessment solutions that are impacting the lives of students around the world.
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Best Practitioner of the Year Award (new for 2022)
Winner - Individual
Steve Dew, Headteacher, Church Cowley St James Primary School, Oxford
Reason for Nomination
"Steve Dew is a brilliant educator, innovator, and research partner. Crucially he is driven by an un-relenting passion to improve the life chances of children. As a result he is un-phased by the inherent challenge of inertia built into the education system.
Steve's particular interest to this point has been around improving the reliability, validity and fairness of assessment in Primary school assessment, especially in writing. Like many educators, Steve was frustrated by a regime being suffocated by accountability where the joy and creativity of writing was being lost. He recognised the potential of liberating the assessment process by using a relative, rather than absolute, approach.
Adaptive Comparative Judgement (ACJ) provided Steve with a way forward and he quickly realised its potential in his own school. Typical of Steve, however, he very quickly saw the potential to improve outcomes more widely and launched a project across a bunch of other schools in his area
(See this article for more information: https://compare.rm.com/blog/2022/01/how-14-oxfordshire-schools-transformed-formative-assessment-with-rm-compare/).
The project was a huge success and was quickly 'productised' by Steve (assessprogress.com) - all while continuing as a Headteacher of 3 Primary schools. His ongoing, hands-on experience has allowed the ACJ experience to be continually improved and he has worked in close partnership with RM to iterate the offer. In doing so we have been able to understand and realise value much faster than would otherwise be possible. An example of this is the advanced reporting functionality (see compare.rm.com/help-centre/reporting/advance-reporting) that has been almost entirely driven by Steve's efforts over a 12 month period.
Steve continues to innovate with a range of new products and services ( see assessprogress.com/products). The driving force remains unchanged however, remaining laser focused on leveraging e-assessment to make a positive difference to learners.
Together we continue to build, measure and learn.
E-assement needs more Steves!"
Winner - Team
TÜV Rheinland’s Global Personnel Certification Team
Reason for Nomination
TÜV Rheinland’s Global Personnel Certification Team embarked on a challenging journey at the end of 2019 to digitalize the management and delivery of several hundred certification programs around the world. At that point in time, TÜV Rheinland PersCert certified 30,000+ people per annum – primarily in the areas of IT and Data Security, Quality Management, Health & Safety, Sustainability and technical vocational training. The certification programs are very strongly competence-based and include not only MCQ exams but also practical exams, oral exams, essay exams and portfolio assessments and are available across all continents.
In order to digitalize the team selected the Questionmark platform and worked together with the Questionmark team to configure the TÜV Rheinland Certification Hub which enabled the digitalization of all certification processes – from candidate registration to remote and onsite delivery of all exam types to certificate fulfilment and recertification.
The challenges that the team had to overcome were exacerbated by the significant diversity of the programs and the geographical location of the candidates - meaning that the Certification Hub had to be available in more than 14 languages – and the project had to then be accelerated in order to enable TÜV Rheinland customers to be able to continue their certification tracks and career progression throughout the pandemic.
The team achieved an outstanding job, ensuring business continuity by getting online proctored exams up and running around the world in a matter of weeks and then went on to continue their excellent work by ensuring that the Certification Hub was configured to cover the entire certification process, training staff around the world and providing support in getting the teams on board. At the end of 2019, the team comprised 5 members which has grown to 10 members by the start of 2022, all working from home office.
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Best International Implementation Award 2022
Winner
NEBOSH International Digital Assessments
Project Summary
"NEBOSH was a traditional paper-based, live-invigilated, closed-book assessment examination board, with no digital assessments. The pandemic stopped our assessments across the world overnight. Our core objective is to ensure workers have the skills, knowledge and understanding to make workplaces safer: we were determined to keep the learner journey going for every learner, everywhere in the world.
We engaged a new e-learning partner (Open LMS) and redesigned our traditional assessments in line with our Regulator’s principles and our charitable aims. We kept our Learning Partners and learners informed and involved them where we could.
We recognise the benefits of eAssessments for everyone. They not only saved our organisation and our Learning Partners’ livelihoods, they have also increased our global reach to learners who previously did not have access to an examination venue due to their geographical location.
Challenges in accommodating learners from all time zones have been met and we have grown considerably in our registrations for our core certificates, especially in India and the Middle East.
We are not stopping with this project either, our aim is to convert existing qualifications and all new ones so we become a predominantly eAssessment organisation."
Finalists
- Excelsoft Technologies working with Securities Industry Development Corporation, Malaysia
- University of Waterloo and PebblePad. An e-portfolio and e-assessment success story
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Best Formative Assessment Project 2022
Winner
Nurture – Next-generation Feedback & Assessment
Project Summary
"Nurture is the next generation of feedback and assessment, simplifying formative feedback and assessment for schools; shifting from summative to formative. Nurture was born from the award-winning social enterprise company called jumpAgrade - which aimed to level the educational playing field for those from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. When COVID-19 hit, jumpAgrade had proved beyond a doubt that its research backed framework for delivering powerful and timely formative feedback was effective and could be embedded in response to the pandemic. In its first year of operation, Nurture has worked with over 100 schools across Ireland, the UK and Italy.
Our five-step process is guided by our research backed framework. Our platform explicitly links learning objectives to the feedback, as this is the most effective way to move learning forward. In addition, we guide teachers through the provision of Task, Process and Self-regulated feedback. Finally, along the way we collect student confidence and link it to the student’s success. The teacher now has insights into their students’ confidence, knowledge attainment and can provide powerful feedback. Finally, we ensure students engage with the feedback by closing the feedback loop, this is achieved by withholding the grade behind a self-reflection."
Finalists
- ACCA and TestReach with the ACCA CBE Practice Platform
- University of Derby and Vretta Inc with Elevate My Maths
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Best Summative Assessment Project 2022
Winner
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology
Project Summary
"Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad University of Technology (MAKAUT) is a 70-year-old, large public university located in West Bengal, India It has more than 150K students enrolled and offers more than 300+ courses It conducts more than 6 million assessments annually Conducting the mid and end-term summative assessments for such a large student cohort was major challenge for the University The entire exercise used to take more than 120 days each year Moreover, during all these periods, the various teaching staff were involved only in assessment activities Despite investing time & money over 20% of students filed grievances and asked re-evaluation of their scores each year.
MAKAUT adopted integrated assessment system called UCanAssess, It is an AI-enabled solution that covers the entire range of assessment practices and processes whether offline, online, subjective/viva-voice, or self-scoring The solution also helped in handling all process flows [for all stakeholders] from student registration, question authoring & moderation, exam conduction, AI-assisted remote proctoring, scoring, and finally compilation of all scores to generate student transcripts and certificates.
The implementation has led to reduction in cost by 50% and time by 75% Student grievances and requests for re-evaluation have also fallen by 90% after the implementation of application."
Finalists
- Prodigy Learning with DOTS on Skillify – online standardised assessments national roll-out in Ireland
- E-assessment at the University of Jeddah: A Step toward Aligning Assessment to Learning Outcomes
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Most Innovative Use of Technology in Assessment Award 2022
Winner
Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) with ACER Signum – online Standard Setting application
Project Summary
"ACER facilitates standard setting in numerous assessment contexts. The pandemic prompted us to develop an online secure standard setting platform.
This raised new data security challenges. We needed a process for collecting judgments that was robust, but simple and straightforward for users. The solution needed to handle multifarious assessment formats and diverse contexts.
Adopting the ‘double-diamond’ product design process, we developed an online application named Signum. This product design process minimised the time from product ideation to delivery. Multiple trials provided valuable feedback that was translated into new features.
Signum is now being used for several Angoff variations, the Bookmark method, and Pairwise comparison studies. A continuous integration and deployment pipeline, utilising latest web-stack technologies, ensures a quality user experience.
Clients have been highly receptive to the software, and demonstrations have led to the use of Signum for other data collection and rating activities. Reliability is ensured through automated end-to-end testing. New features can be deployed within hours. The platform has passed a robust penetration test and handles complex content and diverse item formats through screenshots. The design and implementation of Signum demonstrates an agile approach to developing fit-for-purpose software for flexible use – a new contribution to the field."
Finalists
- Certiverse
- Qpercom Ltd with Remote Clinical Assessment & Interviews
- Tata Consultancy Services with TCS iON PAPER
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Best Transformational Project Award 2022
Winner
Excelsoft Technologies – Assessing and Certifying Home Care Aide Workers for Geriatric Care
"SEIU (Service Employees International Union) 775 Benefits Group is a large nonprofit training organization in Washington State in the United States with a mission to improve the skills, health and stability of the caregiving workforce through innovative high-quality benefits and programs. They train and certify 60,000+ home-care aid workers every year who provide high-quality home-care, nursing home-care and other day health services.
SEIU 775 was using traditional paper-based assessments for assessing and certifying the skill sets of caregivers. To digitize their assessment processes, SEIU sought a comprehensive online testing solution that addressed certain unique requirements such as support for multiple native languages, compatibility across various devices and an innovative way to facilitate and evaluate practical examinations. Additionally, SEIU wanted visibility into the impact of their training to be able to measure the efficacy of their programs.
Excelsoft’s team worked closely with the staff and management at SEIU 775 to understand their needs in detail, design and implement a digital online assessment solution, based on Excelsoft’s comprehensive, smart, secure and reliable SarasTM Test and Assessment platform.
Since the launch of the project, 2 million+ online assessments have been delivered on the platform completely transforming the overall assessment strategy of the organization."
Finalists
- Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) with PAT Adaptive assessment and the PAT Data Explorer
- Fry-IT Practique platform for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC)
- Prodigy Learning & Educational Research Centre – Transforming from paper to online assessments in Ireland
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Best Research Award 2022
Winner
Examity, Inc with Remote proctoring: 6 common test-taker challenges
Project Summary
"We believe that the judging panel ought to shortlist Examity's research published in 2021 because it is unique in the online proctoring space. But why?
- There was a clear research / knowledge gap in the online proctoring sector
- There was a clear lack of research grounded in primary data (as opposed to secondary desktop research)
- Whilst there were marketing interests, the research actually extends beyond Examity's commercial need
- Many organisations in the certification, qualification and HE sectors that are new to online proctoring did not have access to research
- Our research is uniquely focused and centred around test-takers
- Our research makes practical recommendations based on experience and unrivalled data sampling.
The research is unique because it derives conclusions from over 2 million proctored exams / data points in 2020. From this data, we narrowed our research output to 6 key findings: the most common challenges test-takers face when undertaking an online proctored exam.
Key findings and observations
- Difficulty connecting to a proctor
- Unexpected challenges in appointment scheduling
- Confusion over exam logistics and results
- Confusion surrounding exam rules
- Data privacy and security concerns
- Trouble finding an ideal test environment."
Finalists
- Brightpath Assessment and Reporting Software
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Best Workplace or Talent Assessment Project 2022
Winner
The Cabinet Office and Talogy/PSI with The CSJT: A multimedia assessment delivering ambitious inclusivity and efficiency goals with the Civil Service
Project Summary
"The Civil Service is an organisation of over 400,000 employees and is committed to improving the delivery of public services for everyone in society. The Government Recruitment Service (GRS), who support the Civil Service’s recruitment needs, were keen to reflect this focus on public service, inclusion and accessibility in their new online test process they wanted to implement.
The Civil Service Judgement Test (or CSJT) was the first in a suite of online assessments designed by the GRS (in collaboration with PSI) to deliver accessible, engaging and realistic assessments to attract and identify talent from all walks of life. The aim of the CSJT and other assessments was for the Civil Service to lead the way in creating a disability-inclusive culture where colleagues can realise their full potential with recruitment processes that are accessible to all.
Since the launch of the CSJT, it has been used to assess over one million people, with the number of requests for adjustments by disabled test takers reduced by an incredible 80%. The Civil Service has also estimated that the implementation of the test, has saved £3.5M in resources in under two years, due to no longer needing to manually screen job applications."
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About the International e-Assessment Awards
The e-Assessment Awards programme holds a unique and truly global position, as it encompasses all sectors of education from schools, through further and higher education to workplace training and professional exams.
The past two years have seen probably the greatest advance not only in the uptake of organisations switching to use some form of online assessments, but also a recognition that both learning and assessment can be enhanced by embracing digital technology.
Matt Wingfield, Chief Executive of the e-Assessment Association said,
“Digital Assessment is now at the forefront of many discussions and is transforming the way assessment is approached across the world. This year entries have once again come in from the continents of Asia, Africa, Europe, Oceania, and North America; giving us a real opportunity to learn from those who are innovating, researching, and driving change in the industry.”
Professor Bob Harrison, Chair of the Judges said,
“This is my second year as Chair of the judging panel and yet again it has been an enormous privilege and a tremendous source of inspiration to see how collaboration between educators, assessment bodies, technologists and commercial interests have worked together, despite the challenges of the pandemic. These awards demonstrate the capacity and capability within the world of e-assessment to use technology to improve the assessment process and make it more accessible, reliable, valid, relevant, and cost effective.”
The e-Assessment Awards Finalists Showcase Webinar Series
In the lead up to the 2022 International e-Assessment Conference, we were delighted to launch our pre-conference showcase webinars featuring all of our 2022 Awards finalists.
