E-assessments are becoming increasingly common and progressively more complex. Consequently, how these longer, more complex questions are designed and marked is imperative. This article uses the NUMBAS e-assessment tool to investigate the best practice for creating longer questions and their mark schemes on surveying modules taken by engineering…

Educators set restrictions in examinations to enable them to assess learning outcomes under particular conditions. The open book versus closed book binary is an example of the sorts of restrictions examiners have traditionally set. In the late 2000s this was expanded to a trinary to include open web examinations. However, the current technology…

With the recent and rapid transition to online teaching and learning in higher education, this explanatory study investigated the key design considerations used by business educators designing assessments suitable for online delivery. From a comprehensive literature review, we identified five key design considerations for online assessments: they…

Online examinations are a common experience in higher education. Their security is a key concern for education communities, and has resulted in a variety of cheating countermeasures. There is broad consensus in the literature that there is no one measure, including proctoring, which eradicates cheating behaviours. As a result, this study is…

This study reports on the incorporation of mobile instant messaging (MIM) in assessments, as a collaborative learning tool, to enable students to socially construct knowledge and develop their collaborative problem solving competence, while being assessed individually. In particular, this study explores: what is the extent and timing of students'…

Over four semesters of a large introductory statistics course the authors found students were engaging in contract cheating on Chegg.com during multiple choice examinations. In this paper we describe our methodology for identifying, addressing and eventually eliminating cheating. We successfully identified 23 out of 25 students using a combination…

COVID-19 caused substantial change in learning and teaching in higher education. In this article we explore how assessment changed in the initial semester of emergency remote teaching in an Australian university. Seventy academics responsible for courses (unit of study), representing a wide array of disciplines, completed an online survey at the…

Although the effectiveness and experiences of computer-based examinations is a widely investigated area of research, the question of whether and how computer-based assessment limits or heightens the experience of negative test emotions remains largely unexamined. Drawing from the control-value theory of achievement emotions, we investigated…

This study sought to determine whether an evaluator conducting electronic course evaluations in person in a classroom increased response rates. At a large public university in the United States, course evaluations were being conducted electronically, attaining a response rate of <50% over several semesters. At the end of the Spring 2015 at this…

A concern that has been raised with the transition from pen and paper examinations to electronic examinations is whether this will make cheating easier. This article investigates how teachers and students perceive the differences in ease of cheating during three types of written examination: paper exams, bring your own device e-exams and e-exams…

As a form of assessment, examinations are designed to determine whether students have met learning outcomes. However, students with disabilities report avoiding examinations, selecting units of study where the assessments align with their strengths. To ensure examinations do not contribute to the systematic exclusion of students with disabilities,…

This article reports on the implementation of formative e-assessments in courses taken by first-year students. The central aim is to measure the effectiveness of the formative e-assessments with reference to the student voice and staff reflections. Students engaged with the formative assessments and the evidence gathered via questionnaires show…

Assessment is an important element of any effective teaching and learning strategy. Designing an appropriate assessment strategy is a continual challenge for instructors because the assessment structure must be well aligned with the intended learning outcomes. Technological advances have led to an expansion of online and distance modes of course…

We examine the effects of computer-based versus paper-based assessment of critical thinking skills, adapted from English (in the U.S.) to Chinese. Using data collected based on a random assignment between the two modes in multiple Chinese colleges, we investigate mode effects from multiple perspectives: mean scores, measurement precision, item…

The paper reports the results of a phenomenographic study on academics' conceptions of e-assessment. A cohort of 21 academics from 17 disciplines participated in semi-structured interviews exploring their experiences of using web-based technologies for formative and summative assessment purposes. Through iterative analysis of the interview…