E‐assessment within the Bologna paradigm: evidence from Portugal

Abstract

The Bologna Declaration brought reforms into higher education that imply changes in teaching methods, didactic materials and textbooks, infrastructures and laboratories, etc. Statistics and mathematics are disciplines that traditionally have the worst success rates, particularly in non‐mathematics core curricula courses. This research project, Mathematics and Statistics for the Development of Professional Skills, which is in progress at the University of Beira Interior in Portugal, has as one of its main objectives the development of the e‐assessment system as a resource for learning assessment and student self‐regulation. Based on the results of the above‐mentioned project, this paper will give evidence of how to improve the reliability of an e‐assessment system, show that e‐assessment can be a good alternative to open‐ended tests and that students tend to show a positive attitude towards its use. We show that this can be done by checking the internal consistency and measurement error of the e‐assessment tests, the analysis of the association between student scores obtained by different methods of assessment and the analysis of data survey on student opinion about e‐assessment methods.

Keywords:

• e‐assessment
• open‐ended tests
• reliability
• measurement error
• statistics learning assessment

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful comments and questions raised by the referee.

Notes

1. Funded by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education (Action IV.1.2 – Qualification in Higher Education, Innovative Research Projects, reference code: POCI/C/04.01.02/0155/0001/200).

2. It must end in September 2008 according to the contract with the sponsor.