Internet-Based Assessment Rationale

Internetbased assessment is an EU project to promote European co-operation in the field of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) and Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This document arises from the first partners meeting. It describes the project's common platform, using words and ideas that are familiar in the partner countries (Belgium, England and Sweden).

1. Assessment, in the form of examinations, has existed in Europe since the Middle Ages.

2. Throughout their history, examinations have contributed to educational and social differentiation.

3. Examinations currently embrace at least two technologies: a visible technology related to test construction, test administration and test interpretation; and an invisible - or political - technology related to social differentiation.

4. Examination technologies have been widely adopted in the creation and development of national school systems.

5. Examinations also have a personal dimension. All Europeans have had their emotions (e.g. pleasure, humiliation, confusion, anger) aroused by examination technologies.

6. Nevertheless, some humans beings have also learned to play the examination game.

7. Test developers also try to remove subjective elements from examinations, making them more objective.

8. Since the end of the 1700s, many European educationists have accepted that their task is to promote Enlightenment (or Bildung) ideals.

9. Education is as much about personal development and social integration as it is for selection and accreditation.

10. This educational goal has become more prominent as elite forms of higher education have been replaced by assumptions about 'higher education for all'.

11. To support personal development and social integration examinations can be transformed into assessment for learning.

12. These assessment tools also have software analogues, which can be incorporated into teaching and learning.

13. A zone of development is opened up for educationists. The Minerva Project, Internetbased assessment, is exploring the development potential of that zone.