Assessment in large classes are particularly time consuming in regards to marking of assessment sheets. Due to assessor fatigue, fairness in marking may suffer. Where a pool of assessors mark the same parts of the assessment sheets reliability between marks may suffer due to bias and differences in interpretation of outcomes and answers (McMillan 2001:20 & SAQA 2001:16-19).
The use of technology in assessment practices reduces the possibility of assessor fatigue and differences introduced by a pool of assessors. The School of Medicine at the University of the Free State uses an electronic polling system from eInstruction as assessment aid. The system is designed as an assessment tool. Each student has an electronic polling pad and all lecture rooms have receivers that are linked to a computer. Assessments are polled by the system and by the time the assessment stops, the marking process is completed. Reliability, fairness and validity are not compromised due to lecture fatige or differences in assessor interpretation.
Students are positive about assessments that uses the polling system and they trust the validity of the marks. Lecturers use the system since it reduces the workload associated with assessment evaluation. The system adapts to a variety of assessment instruments and assessments are typically in PowerPoint or paper based. Polling are only possible with MCQ type questions but the system enables the lecturer to have different types of questions in the same paper. A paper may include MCQ mixed with essay type questions. Assessors must mark the essay questions.
Further benefits of the polling system are that different types of reports that are available to lecturers. Reports transfer data seamlessly to printable sheets as can be viewed in the Instructor Summary report below.
From certain reports, it is possible to see the spread of performance to specific questions as may be seen in the Response Report below. Questions that are not understood by students or that cover work that were not included is easily identified from the scores that students recieve. From these it is possible to enhance the validity and set the assessment level of each assessment.
The use of polling system for assessments in the medical curriculum are governed by a School policy and underwritten by the Teaching and Learning plan of the University of the Freee State.
