Until now, I’d not properly interrogated what I mean by ‘digital’ in terms of assessment. I thought of ‘digital’ as an adjective to stick in front of an object and change it from traditional to innovative, from analogue to digital or, more commonly in the context of educational assessment (my area of work), from paper to screen. However, having joined a team working on next generation assessments in Cambridge University Press & Assessment, I now experience first-hand what digital really is. Tom Loosemore’s definition of digital is widely quoted and describes digital as a way of working, an approach, a set of values:
"Applying the culture, processes, business models and technologies of the internet era to respond to people’s raised expectations.".
Loosemore expands on this definition to describe internet-era ways of working. Our work adopts the principles of this approach, we:
- put the users (in our case teachers and learners) first and continually check that we are meeting their needs
- test assumptions
- are a multidisciplinary team with agency
- start small, and iterate based on user feedback, and build incrementally.
CWe are developing educational products, including assessments, and their look and feel may be different from what we currently think of as assessment. We are thinking outside of the usual constraints – existing processes, policy, regulatory conditions and requirements for equivalence with an existing qualification – and this means that we can challenge the assumptions that these bring and influence policy.
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