QTI: A Failed E-Learning Standard?

Introduction

Assessment has always played an important role in education. Most, if not all, types of formal education use some sort of assessment, typically including a final exam to earn a grade, a degree, a license, or some other form of qualification.

Today, assessment is no longer restricted to grading at the end of a course (summative assessment), but it has been recognized that assessment is also useful for continuous monitoring and guiding of the learning progress (formative assessment), without being necessarily used for grading purposes (Boud, 2000).

Formative assessment, including self-assessment, can play a vital role in motivating students since it provides them with a way to judge their own competency level and allows them to track their progress. It also enables students to identify areas where more work is required, and to thereby remain motivated to improve further. Of course, this requires that students receive feedback as quickly as possible (Gibbs and Simpson, 2004).

Formative assessment also provides timely feedback for instructors, both with respect to the effectiveness of the course and the performance of the students; it thus helps to identify points that might need clarification.

For both groups, instructors and students, frequent testing is preferable. Case and Swanson (2002) argue that infrequent testing makes each exam a “major event,” with students investing much effort into preparation—they may even stop attending class to prepare for the exam. They also note that, with infrequent tests, students may be unable to determine whether they are studying the right material and with sufficient depth. Case and Swanson therefore conclude:

Assessment is always a time-consuming activity for instructors, especially if large numbers of students are to be assessed or, if assessment is frequent. This has motivated the development of technical devices to support assessment, starting with relatively simple mechanical devices in the 1920s and evolving to today’s computer-aided assessment (CAA) or e-assessment.

E-assessment is one of the fundamental elements of e-learning: Piotrowski (2009, p. 41) defines six activities that characterize e-learning platforms: Creation, organization, delivery, communication, collaboration, and assessment. Furthermore, of these six activities, assessment is the only one that is specifically educational; the other five activities are generic and not specific to e-learning.

The most frequently used form of e-assessment are multiple-choice tests. Multiple-choice tests have a number of practical advantages; in particular, scoring can be automated. This makes them especially attractive in e-learning settings, as it allows to make assessment available “anyplace, anytime.”

Creating high-quality multiple-choice tests, however, is challenging, especially if they are to assess higher-order cognitive levels, such as application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation in the traditional taxonomy of Bloom (1956). Or, as Astin (1991) puts it:

Ensuring the reusability, longevity, and platform independence of tests can mitigate the high costs of creation and can help preserve investments and intellectual assets when hardware and software change, thus ensuring sustainability. This requires a standard, platform-neutral, vendor-independent interchange file format for multiple-choice tests.