Best Formative Assessment Project Award

When schooling was disrupted across Australia during the COVID-19 lockdowns in early 2020, the New South Wales Department of Education (NSW DoE) was concerned that students’ learning progress would be impacted. The NSW DoE engaged Australian edtech pioneer Janison to develop an online diagnostic tool that would quickly identify students’ learning gaps in literacy and numeracy. The Check-in assessment was implemented in an expeditious six-week timeframe and delivered to 1290 schools during a three-week window in Term 3. With test results provided within an unprecedented 24 hours, teachers had instant access to insights that allowed them to implement targeted literacy and numeracy support for students who needed extra help. Growing rapidly since its inception, the Check-in assessment delivered 1.2 million tests to New South Wales (NSW) schools in 2022, representing a 95 percent participation rate across all NSW schools. In 2022, Janison also implemented newly developed accessibility features to provide an equitable assessment experience for students with disability. NSW Minister for Education and Early Learning Sarah Mitchell dubbed Check-in “a world-class diagnostic tool”.

FirstPass: A human-centered AI project - Best Formative Assessment Project Award Developed by Bolton College and supported by NCFE’s Assessment Innovation Fund (AIF) initiative, FirstPass is an innovative online platform that supports learners and teachers with the formative assessment of open-ended questions. By offering real-time, automated feedback to learners as they compose their answers, FirstPass allows students to reflect upon and improve their answers before submitting them to their teachers for final review and commentary. In doing so, the platform significantly reduces teacher workload by offering learners targeted, one-to-one feedback which remains consistent, regardless of the volume of marking required. Traditionally, online formative assessment activities have been limited to closed questioning techniques such as multiple-choice or yes/no questions. FirstPass breaks boundaries by harnessing technology which makes possible the automatic online analysis of the highly valuable assessment methodology of open-ended questions. Co-funded by NCFE’s AIF and Ufi VocTech Trust, six UK-based colleges are currently using FirstPass to benefit from the value that it generates for learners, teachers and educational institutions. Subject specialists from all six institutions are training up the AI that powers the platform and increasing the dataset that sits behind it (known as ‘crowdsourcing’), helping to accurately and quickly provide formative feedback in subject areas ranging from business to sport.

Jones & Bartlett Learning (JBL) is a well-established trade publisher in the United States that offers instructional, assessment, and learning performance management solutions to the secondary, post-secondary, and professional markets. They have been developing high-quality learning solutions for over 30 years, covering a wide range of fields such as nursing, public health, health administration, health professions, and computer science, among others. While many trade publishers still rely on physical books or non-interactive PDFs, JBL recognized the increasing demand for digital courseware and sought a partner to help them transition to an engaging and comprehensive digital formative learning experience. In order to accomplish this goal, JBL collaborated with Excelsoft, who created a one-of-a-kind formative learning and assessment ecosystem by bringing together various digital learning products, which consisted of an ebook platform based on the product OpenPage, as well as a Flashcard application and a test prep platform, both based on the flagship Saras Test and Assessment platform. These solutions were then integrated into JBL's Moodle-based Learning Management System (LMS) to ensure a seamless learning experience for all types of learners.