Since UNE’s Online Supervised Exam pilot project (OLX) began in 2017, the number of online exams being undertaken by students has increased dramatically, and in 2021, online exams supplanted paper-based exams as UNE’s default, business-as-usual approach to examinations. This rapid growth necessitated agile approaches to processes, workflows, resourcing and roles but also resulted in ad hoc approaches, mixed understandings of workflows, and a lack of intentional planning about workload and capacity that now needs to be addressed. In addition, Time for Change brought two of OLX’s primary business areas – the Exams and eAssessment Team and the Learning Design Team – into the DigEd portfolio, offering significant opportunities for collaboration and business process design.
Late last year a number of priority areas were identified as key opportunities to transition OLX from an implementation response to integrated effective assessment practice and the OLXi (Integrated approach to OLX) project was launched to take action. These priority areas now form three primary workstreams of the OLXi project:
Standardised processes
This workstream addresses some of the challenges in current approaches to OLX setup through designing a standardised best-practice business process. Following a similar model to the DSSP process redesign, DigEd teams will collaborate to co-design a new process and consult with stakeholders to refine, implement and evaluate.
Alternative assessment
Alternative assessment – a provision under the Assessment Guidelines – has presented some significant challenges around workload, equity and risk exposure. This workstream will review alternative assessment positioning and address some of the challenges through developing standardised practices, including terminology and assessment design.
Resource development
This workstream aims to continue to build staff capability in OLX, creating and curating resources that support exam quality and sustainability, and promote benefits realisation through innovative practice. At this stage two key outputs have been developed:
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- The OLX Experience – a series of articles designed to help shed light on aspects of online examinations and facilitate a strong shared understanding of OLX at UNE
- Rich Media Exemplar Exam – a sample exam that showcases ways in which audiovisual, 3D and interactive media can be integrated into OLX to create rich assessment opportunities not available in paper-based examinations. While this exam will be featured separately in a future post, you can see a teaser screenshot below.
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The OLXi project team will be progressing these workstreams over 2022, with ongoing reporting and stakeholder engagement. For further information on the project, please contact project leads Kylie Day and Steph Toole.
