Online assessment

Online assessment is a common term for the use of computers to deliver, mark and analyse assignments or examinations for diagnostic, formative or summative purposes.

The advantages of online assessment are that it can:

  • save considerable time through automated marking of scripts;
  • provide greater reliability of scoring;
  • offer students immediate feedback on work submitted; and
  • monitor progress (if online assessment is frequently used).

Common question types used in online assessment include:

  • multiple choice questions (MCQs);
  • true or false and variants (eg right/wrong, yes/no);
  • matching (including drag and drop);
  • ranking/ordering.
  • free response; and
  • cloze test.

We currently support two online assessment tools:

  • Blackboard's Test Manager – which allows users to use almost all question types and is very straightforward to learn.
  • Questionmark Perception – which offers a wider range of question types and variations, as well as greater control over how assessments are structured and displayed. It has a more sophisticated set of reporting tools for analysing student answers. It also offers a much higher degree of security for so-called high stakes summative assessments through its secure browser software (preventing students accessing other websites during a test).

Earlier versions of Blackboard offered a more basic set of tools for delivering assessments, whereas Perception offered a much more sophisticated system, external to Blackboard. The current version of Blackboard now offers an expanded range of question types, which brings it more in line with the features available in Perception.

Our recommendation to colleagues is to start off using Blackboard tools and move on to Perception if more complicated functionality and secure browser is necessary.