Dear friends,
Our esteemed colleague Benő Csapó will receive an honorary doctorate this May (https://fil-promootio2019.helsinki.fi/en/honorary-doctors/). Before the festivities he will give a talk on recent developments in Educational Assessment. It is our distinct pleasure to invite you to attend.
Risto Hotulainen Patrik Scheinin
The eDia Online Assessment System: Research, Development and Educational Practice
Benő Csapó
University of Szeged, Hungary
Abstract
The rapid development of technology-based testing not only revolutionized educational assessment but also advanced educational practice and opened new routes for educational research. A team of the Center for Research on Learning and Instruction at the University of Szeged has been developing an online assessment system, the eDia for providing teachers and students with systematic, frequent and reliable diagnostic feedback in the domains of reading, mathematics, and science in the first six years of primary schools. This lecture overviews research on cognitive development and structure of knowledge conducted from the 1990s which contributed to the foundations of three-dimensional assessment frameworks. The presentation outlines the development of the eDia, the technological aspects of building the testing platform, on the one hand, and the creation of item-banks (comprising over 25,000 items) with the active participation of practicing teachers, on the other. It describes how diagnostic assessments work in educational practice in over 1,000 partner schools of the Center at present, how teachers are prepared for using and developing the system, what teachers’ feedback is (their acceptance of the eDia), and how systematic diagnostic assessment can be extended for all primary schools. The presentation outlines the main tasks of the next phase of development, including more systematic embedding of diagnostic assessment into teaching and learning processes, examining how regular feedback can contribute to the personalization of teaching in heterogeneous classes, and how adequate interventions can be offered to students who need it the most.
Beyond supporting educational practice, the eDia has become an innovative research instrument. It has not only significantly reduced costs and time of the entire data-collection process, but it has made it possible to assess new constructs (e.g., dynamic problem solving), to devise innovative scoring processes (e.g., combinatorial reasoning, creativity) and to extend possibilities of international cooperative studies (e.g., the online assessments in the framework of Vantaa tablet study). The presentation reviews the major research studies and comparative assessments supported by the eDia.
A further utilization of the eDia platform offers assessments in higher education. Since 2015, the eDia has been used for assessing students at the beginning of their university studies in order to identify their weaknesses and to provide them with adequate support for preventing dropout without earning a degree. In the framework of this work, a proposed online Matriculation Examination has also been piloted. Analysis of the result in a broader context may lead to promising findings for further bilateral cooperation as well as for Europe-wide assessments, including the possibilities of an online European Matriculation Examination.
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