A quarterly publication of AQU Catalunya

91

October 2018

Society is now in the digital age, a fact that is due mainly to globalisation and easy access to the Internet. These two factors have also had a direct impact on teaching and learning processes, as well as higher education institutions. In addition, various studies have shown that the vast majority of universities offer, or are planning to offer, e-learning courses (both distance learning and blended learning).

One aspect that is a major challenge in this field for higher education institutions is how to guarantee that the right student has logged in (authentication) and personally taken a test or submitted work online (authorship). The need to resolve this problem led to the setting up of a system of e-assessment known as the TeSLA project (688520–TeSLA–H2020-ICT-2015/H2020-ICT-2015) to assure authentication and authorship in the various stages of learning.

TeSLA (Adaptive Trust-based e-Assessment System for Learning) is a European innovation and research project funded by the European Commission within the framework of the Horizon 2020 Programme and is coordinated by the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). The system will provide effective proof of student identity and verify the authorship of written documents through the use of biometric recognition technology (including face recognition, voice recognition and keystroke dynamics) and textual analysis between documents (with anti-plagiarism software and stylometric analysis), among other techniques. The project, which has a duration of three years, was started in January 2016 and will come to an end at the beginning of 2019.

The research methodology of the TeSLA project is based on a series of large-scale pilot studies to evaluate and assure the reliability of the TeSLA system. More specifically, three pilot studies were carried out in seven European universities during the 2016-17 and 2017-18 academic years, with a student participation that ranged from 600 (pilot study 1) to around 14,000 (pilot study 3).

AQU Catalunya, ENQA and EQANIE are all participating organisations in the work package dealing with the quality assurance of e-assessment procedures, which is led by AQU Catalunya. The meta-evaluation of the third pilot study has just been completed. This process has ensured the system's applicability, integrity and reliability in different online learning environments. It is important to bear in mind, however, that the commitment to quality assurance goes beyond the context of the project and that its ultimate objective is to define a framework for quality assurance for all e-assessment procedures.

In the design of the QA methodology for the TeSLA project, the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) have been used for reference purposes, in particular the following:

(i) the involvement of external experts;

(ii) the design of an external review procedure for the

(iii) enhancement of each stage of the project; and

(iv) the design of a review methodology that includes eight ESG standards:

1. Policies, structures, processes and resources for the QA of e-assessment.
2. Learning assessment.
3. E-assessment system security, capacity and authenticity.
4. Infrastructure and resources.
5. Student support.
6. Teaching staff.
7. Learning analytics.
8. Public information.

The application of this methodology in the different pilot studies and the results obtained in this study provide an opportunity to make an important step forward in the quality assurance of e-assessment. It should be noted that, depending on the background and context of different institutions and bearing in mind the regulations at both European and state level, the resources and efforts necessary to comply with QA requirements in e-assessment may well vary. Online universities comply with the majority of aspects, whereas traditional universities that offer distance and blended learning will need to focus attention on new aspects, such as the teaching model, the e-learning environment, student support and teaching staff, etc.