At the e-Assessment Question in London this year TAG Developments will for the first time engage an entire conference in a LiveAssess assessment task. 100 delegates will brainstorm their ideas for a bow tie using the LiveAssess software, construct a prototype and photograph it using the LiveAssess software and then video a short presentation on their final piece again using the LiveAssess software. eaa_logo_with_name_from_oct_09.jpg

The live controlled exam session will be controlled from the stage using the MAPS system, delegates will be able to see their peers progress towards completion of the task with the sub tasks driven to their devices using instant messaging technology embedded within LiveAssess. Each delegate will by the end have produced their own storyboard portfolios of their design work evidencing not just the final product of the activity but the process by which they got there.

Finally delegates will then take part in a conference wide Comparative Judgement session. This accreditation body technology facilitates a national implementaion of theComparative Judgement process, a replacement for traditional marking pioneered by the work of Alistair Pollit and Professor Richard Kimbell. In Comparative Judgement, markers are replaced by judges who are shown pairs of pieces of work online and are asked to say which one is better without reference to detailed objective criteria. The system in the background then chooses which pair to show to subsequent judges and thus refines the rank order of student work in the back ground.

The e-Assessment Association launched the e-Portfolio Special Interest Group (SIG) with an aim to provide a forum for those interested or involved in the development and implementation of e-Portfolios, offering the opportunity to discuss their role and impact in learning and teaching.

Attendees had the chance to discuss how the SIG will achieve the following objectives:

• have a role in shaping educational policy and strategy
• establish an e-Portfolio knowledgebase
• share information and promote good practice
• contribute to the development of standards

Matt Wingfield presented TAG Development's work with the British Standards Institute on BS8518, a new standard to facilitate Interoperability between Centres and Accreditation Bodies.

For more information on the e-Assessment Association, visit:

http://www.e-assessmentgroup.net/

Netmedia Education and TAG Developments (“TAG”), the e-Assessment Division of BLi Education Limited, are pleased to announce that the two companies have reached agreement on offering interoperability and Single Sign on between the highly popular Netmedia Education Learning Platform and TAG’s multi-award winning MAPS coursework assessment system.

It has long been recognised that in order for schools to maximise the benefits of implementing ICT to empower teaching and learning, teachers and students will need to utilise a number of systems and software applications. However, this means that teachers and students need to remember an increasing number of user names and passwords for the different systems that they use, causing additional and unnecessary classroom management headaches for teachers and placing ICT hurdles in the way of students’ learning.

Netmedia and TAG recognise this issue and as a result have developed a solution that is currently being implemented in an extended pilot with selected schools. This solution provides seamless integration between Netmedia’s My Suite Learning Platform and TAG’s MAPS coursework assessment system through Netmedia’s ‘MyIdentity’. It allows a user to log-on only once to a dedicated log-on service, and then access multiple services that otherwise would each require unique logins/passwords. MyIdentity utilises Shibboleth, an international standard that “hand shakes” between different systems to facilitate access, using encrypted protocols to maintain very high level of security. This is a huge step forward for teachers, saving them valuable time in accessing and managing the many pieces of software that they need in their planning and teaching.

Matt Wingfield, business development director for TAG Developments, says: “This strategic alliance provides the opportunity to bring together for the first time the proven benefits of both Assessment for Learning and Learning Platform technologies, providing seamless access for teachers and students to a range of powerful learning tools. The reaction from the schools with which we have already piloted this technology has been overwhelmingly positive, and we very much look forward to working with other schools and Local Authorities to offer this tie-up between MAPS and the Netmedia Learning Platform.”

Steven Threadgold, chief technical officer for Netmedia Education says: “Our goal in developing these technologies is to help LAs, teachers and support staff save time and effort - we realise how valuable their time is. While the technology lives in the background, invisible to the end-user, it is the driving force behind making the experience easier, better and more enjoyable. We believe that our efforts will provide enormous benefit by making the access to, and management of, learning platforms and services like MAPS as straight forward as possible.”

MAPS (Managed Assessment Portfolio System) was first launched by TAG in 2002, and is now in use by over 140,000 students aged 5 – 18+ years in schools right across the UK to support the management and assessment of both curricular and qualification digital coursework. The system supports an increasing number of qualifications from AQA, Edexcel, OCR and SQA, including GCSE, GCE, Vocational qualifications and all five of the new Diplomas, enabling teachers to manage, assess and submit qualification coursework seamlessly to the awarding body.

For more information about MAPS (incl. organising a demonstration) please do not hesitate to contact Matt Wingfield: 07850 488 502 or m.wingfield@taglearning.com

-ENDS-

As part of the work that TAG is undertaking as the technology provider to the e-scape project, the TAG Developments' team have successfully completed work to creat a ground breaking software engine to facilitate the comparative pairs assessment of digital coursework.

This means that for the first time, the comparatives pairs approach to assessment can be implemented via a web based e-portfolio on a national scale for the assessment of digital qualification coursework evidence.

The process enables assessment to take place without recourse to the use of scales or marks, but instead facilitates a more subjective assessment where successive pairs of work are presented to assessor, who is asked to indicate which piece of work they perceive to be 'better' [according to the judgement criteria being used]. This process is then repeated numerous times, with pairs of work being presented to a range of different assessors over the internet, according to a predetermined algorithm. The system records the judgements as they are made and then when all judgements have been made, arranges the coursework in rank order. This more subjective approach to assessment makes it an ideal way of assessing less formalised skills, such as creativity.

Comparative Pairs is not a new phenomena, having first been researched and published by L.L Thurston in 1927.

For further information on L.L Thurston or his Law of Comparative Judgement click here

For further information on the e-scape project click here