Resource-Rich Examinations

Conventional examination practice in (higher) education remains resource-poor: Students typically have no more than a task sheet, a pen, an empty piece of paper, and their ‘naked’ mind to work with. When students apply what they have learned in the workforce, academy, or as citizens however, they have available a wide range of potential tools, easy access to information, and tackle tasks collaboratively with support from networks of experts and peers. In this sense, the ‘real-world’ is extremely resource-rich. This richness in resources should appropriately be mirrored in examination task environments.

Three broad types of resources shape our cognitive activities: Tools, information, and social interaction. Tools help us in manipulating and interacting with the world. They come in many shapes and levels of complexity – particularly, they are becoming increasingly powerful, adaptive, intelligent, and autonomous with technological advancements. Data and information help us understand the world and exchange knowledge. The amount of information and data available to us is increasing at accelerating speeds while information access is simultaneously becoming more ubiquitous, instantaneous, and cheap. Social interactions between people arguably lie at the heart of the intellectual and technological ascendancy of the human species. Countless human (intellectual) endeavours build on collaboration and interaction with peers.

The question is then (1) whether there is a need to adequately represent such resources in examination contexts and (2) if yes, how such resource-rich examinations may be implemented in practice. A resource-rich examination practice promises substantial improvements in education in four main areas: Examination validity, assessment driven learning, transfer of learning, and the quality of lecturer-designed examinations. The current research project focusses on validity and is closely related to the ongoing digitization of examination practice at ETH: Many online examinations being conducted at ETH constitute tool-rich or information-rich examination implementations.