Using Microcomputers to Help Teachers to Develop their Assessment Procedures: a Development Project Report

Abstract

In spite of the present climate of educational cutbacks, teachers are being urged to adopt new assessment procedures which incorporate aspects of diagnostic assessment and criterion‐referenced measurement. It is unlikely that teachers will be able to satisfy these demands unless they are provided with some additional support. The project ‘School‐based assessment using item banking’ is designing, test marking and reporting facilities for use on the type of microcomputer which is becoming readily available in schools. Use of these facilities will help teachers to modify their assessment procedures in a gradual, systematic manner. Teachers will still be responsible for producing tests and making use of reports. However, the facilities will remove some of the routine tasks from the teacher and will provide a range of reports which would not otherwise be available. This article describes the strategies adopted by the project team and briefly introduces a new package called Scribe which can be used by teachers for diagnostic purposes.