2024: International eAssessment Awards: Selected Winners Showcase

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Joint with the eAssessment Association . This webinar will showcase selected winners from the International eAssessement Awards. You can view the short list of potential 2024 winners. Award winners will be announced at the Awards Gala Dinner on 11th June 2024 in London as part of the International e-Assessment Conference.

This webinar on 10 July 2024 will showcase two winners who will present and take questions from the audience.

1) Best Summative Assessment Project sponsored by City & Guilds

Winner: The British Council with British Council Primary English Test.

The British Council Primary English Test is a digitally-delivered general proficiency test targeted at students globally learning English as a Foreign Language at Primary and Lower Secondary schools and language tuition centres (9-12 years old). It is a 4-skills (listening, reading, speaking, writing) experience, characterised by digital multimodal tasks that assess independent and integrated English oral and literacy skills. The test is storyline-driven, with engaging animations, featuring innovative question/task types and fun elements. The assessment is designed to explore progressively deeper, more complex skills over the course of the test. The aim is to replicate the immersive experience of playing a digital game with a strong storyline and narrative. Such gamification provides enjoyment and motivation for learners (e.g., through instant feedback: auditory or pictorial). The test has been developed by global experts in English teaching and assessment in collaboration with specialist AI and platform partners. The Primary English Test takes full advantage of significant recent advances in autoscoring technology. Automatic speech recognition and scoring systems are trained to assess a diverse range of speakers. Technical and preparation support is provided for administrators, teachers and students. There are technical and administrative guides, including an orientation video and demo. A free practice test familiarises students with the test format, and offers listening and reading feedback. Scores are generally available instantly to teachers on submission of the test. The scoring report consists of a student certificate and a detailed breakdown of the student's test scores, CEFR levels in reading, listening, speaking and writing. There are also Lexile measures for reading and listening, and additional information including statements describing what the student is able to do in the language. Extensive piloting and field testing generated data to verify high levels of item performance and test reliability. Data was also used to train automated scoring models according to human raters’ scores on a range of measures of communicative competence.

2) Best Formative Assessment Project

Winner: BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT with Using generative AI to assess open-response questions.

The Future of Jobs Report 2023 indicates that by 2027, 43% of work tasks will be automated as a result of innovation, and it is therefore predicted that skills such as critical thinking and evaluation, ethical decision-making, and basic AI literacy are going to be highly needed across most job roles. Generative AI has advanced rapidly in recent years, raising ethical concerns about risks ranging from security breaches to discrimination. By learning to make ethical decisions, organisations can protect their reputation, their customers and the public from the dangers, and they need expert support to do this. To help companies and tech professionals get their approach right, we recently created our own Foundation Certificate in the Ethical Build of AI. In collaboration with our supplier, Tintisha Technologies, as well specialist subject matter groups and internal and external stakeholders, we have devised an AI-powered assessment solution that is safe, effective, and easily adaptable to other projects. As part of the new Lord Mayor of London’s (Michael Mainelli) Ethical AI Initiative, the course teaches professionals how to manage the risks of designing and building AI-powered systems by applying a clear set of ethical principles. By completing the course learners are able to: 1. Gain a practical understanding of how to apply ethical thinking, principles and frameworks when developing AI applications in their own contexts. 2. Study the course in their own time online and attain a BCS professional certification. 3. Sit a final online exam, similar to many of our professional certification exams, supported by shorter formative assessment tasks within the learning. The course is designed to encourage learners to apply their ethical thinking to given situations as they are learning, in their own time. As such, we identified an opportunity to incorporate the use of AI to evaluate learners’ responses within formative assessment activities and provide detailed, individualised feedback. Within our solution we have incorporated the means for learners to be able to comment on the usefulness of the feedback provided to them by the AI and rate it out of five. This allows learners to develop their ability to evaluate generative AI output, which is essential to using it ethically. It also allows BCS to monitor and evaluate the performance of the AI through the quantitative and qualitative data generated by the user comments and ratings so to evaluate the user experience, the effectiveness of the tool, and how we can improve its use as a learning and assessment tool. Many of our customers are education and training providers, and we’re eager to share our experiences to support further thinking and best practice in implementing this sort of AI use.

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Sessions are hosted by Professor Geoffrey Crisp, Retired (DVC Academic, University of Canberra) and Dr Mathew Hillier, Macquarie University, Australia.

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