Mohammad AL-Smadi

In the so-called 'New Culture for Assessment' assessment has become a tool for Learning. Assessment is no more considered to be isolated from the learning process and provided as embedded assessment forms. Nevertheless, students have more responsibility in the learning process in general and in assessment activities in particular. They become more engaged in: developing assessment criteria, participating in self, peer-assessments, reflecting on their own learning, monitoring their performance, and utilizing feedback to adapt their knowledge, skills, and behavior. Consequently, assessment tools have emerged from being stand-alone represented by monolithic systems through modular assessment tools to more flexible and interoperable generation by adopting the service-oriented architecture and modern learning specifications and standards. The new generation holds great promise when it comes to having interoperable learning services and tools within more personalized and adaptive e-learning platforms. In this paper, integrated automated assessment forms provided through flexible and SOA-based tools are discussed. Moreover, it presents a show case of how these forms have been integrated with a Complex Learning Resource (CLR) and used for self-directed learning. The results of the study show, that the developed tool for self-directed learning supports students in their learning process.

Despite the rapid emergence of game-based learning as a method for conveying educational content, constructing pedagogies which effectively combine elements of entertainment gaming with methods of instruction remains a demanding task. Through the notion of 'intuitive guided' learning, this paper presents an approach which seeks to facilitate a structured learning experience whilst allowing learners to explore a non-linear environment. To do so, a framework is presented which externalizes the assessment process in a serious game, whilst also providing a means for game content to be adapted dynamically to translate the outcomes of the assessment process to effective feedback. A developed prototype is implemented to examine the theory in-practice through the case of a game for civil defence training in schools. Using this prototype, a range of methods in which achievements might be related to learner actions are introduced, and their subsequent implications for intuitive learning discussed. Furthermore, the prototype illustrates how assessment rules can be defined as external to the game and subsequently used to generate feedback for a virtual companion who assumes the role of a more-able partner. The long-term potential of such methods as a source of data on player behaviour is discussed, suggesting further benefits the technique might offer to educators seeking to introduce game-based learning within the curriculum in a blended fashion.

The emergence of Web 2.0 and the influence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have fostered e-learning to be more interactive, challenging, and situated. As a result, learners felt empowered when they are engaged in collaborative learning activities and self-directed learning. Given the different learning styles of students, educators are faced with the challenge of having to develop assessments which are required to appraise the students' learning process. Therefore, assessment models of learning experiences enriched with complex learning resources such as: simulations, serious games, and collaborative and virtual experiences are required. In this paper, an Integrated Model for e-Assessment (IMA) of learning experiences enriched with such complex learning resources is proposed. Moreover, a bottom-up framework of how to use IMA is discussed. A case study of developed tool and experiment is shown to more explain the model and the framework.

Recently, a new age of information has appeared where information and communication technology plays a major role in education and learning society. Consequently, modern learning settings represented by emerging learning strategies have been used in higher education. A primary goal for higher education is to support students and lifelong learners to be independent, self-motivated, and self-regulated. As a result, students should be provided with enhanced approaches of learning and assessment that support them to set their learning goals effectively, to plan and use effective strategies in order to achieve their goals, to manage resources, to monitor their understanding, and to assess their progress towards their goals. This paper proposes an enhanced approach of e-assessment where automatically created formative assessments are provided to support self-regulated learners.

Students nowadays play major roles in the new culture of assessment where new forms of assessment have been adapted. Several labels have been used for assessment such as collaborative assessment, self- and peer-assessment. In this paper, we will present a computer-assisted peer assessment system that can be used to improve the learning process. An overall architecture for this system will be presented and an experiment has been conducted. First findings will be discussed and future work will be mentioned.

... Biographical notes: Mohammad AL-Smadi is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Information Systems ... ADL (2008) 'The advanced distributed learning', available at http://www.adlnet.gov/ about/index.aspx ... AL-Smadi, M. and Gütl, C. (2010) 'SOA-based architecture for a generic and ...

In this paper, we will address an enhanced approach for online peer-assessment where new features of candidate answer marking have been used. Students are capable to select specific parts from the candidate answer and mark them as correct, wrong, or irrelevant. Special colors are used to tag the selected part of the candidate answer in order to help students giving a reasonable final score and to provide visual feedback for the answer owner. A web based tool has been developed, an experiment was conducted and valuable results have been found.

In the last decade, universities and higher education institutes have become more and more interested in using computers to deliver their formative and summative assessments. Therefore, several computer-assisted-assessment systems have been developed. The variance in the application domains of e-assessment has a main influence on having different assessment systems in the same university. Since universities have different colleges and specializations based on their types and in order to deliver their assessment activities online, each college is developing or buying assessment system or tools based on its specializations and courses. This has caused some universities to have more than one computer-assisted-assessment system. In this paper, a service-oriented e-assessment system will be suggested to solve this problem. A service-oriented architecture for a generic and flexible assessment system will be provided with cross-domain use cases to show the flexibility of this architecture.