Digital Assessment in higher education in Norway

Abstract

The digital age is already influencing our life in a tremendously manner and new technologies are being deployed and adopted by the public sector are bringing in new, innovative ways in which citizens and businesses interact with public authorities. This causes new ways of working within the public sector, and the swift towards digital services are challenging how services traditionally are developed and delivered by public sector itself. These digital advancement challenges those traditional education methods we are used to, within higher education. In all other aspects of society student, academic and administrative staff are used to a digital environment. Student expects to do their exam digitally and not bee forced to reproduce their knowledge with a pen and paper. Todays process is ineffective and are facing several non–secure issues, as well as the need of rethinking how assessment is conducted.

Digital assessment is about working smarter, moving from paper based assessment procedures to digital procedures, reducing the time and energy spent, and improving the quality of the old written assessments procedures.

One of the top issues of student and top management at Norwegian Universities and university colleges are how to digitalize the assessment practice. Several higher education institutions in Norway have done a lot, others have just started, while others are planning to start up. Common for these institutions are that they are all facing the same challenges; “what do we mean by digitalization of assessment”, “how does this influence institutions existing practice” and “which technical and security issues do we need to address”. This paper looks at the national projects that have been initiated by at and is financed by the Norwegian Government and the Ministry of Education. The project is lead by UNINETT and includes participation of thirty higher education institutions as well as participation of the student democracy.