Transcript EDI
VO
"EDI is an accredited Awarding Organisation and leading international education company with a wide range of products and services including vocational and professional qualifications.
EDI has a strong vocational offer with centres across private training providers and colleges of further education. Increasingly they are becoming involved with schools and 14-19 provision”.
Dialogue
The company grew out of a company that offered assessments onscreen This was an assessment service based on offering teachers a chance to test their children in national curriculum subjects predominantly at key stage 2 and 3. It was a fully automated web based system and it gave teachers confidence that their children were performing at the appropriate national curriculum levels".
VO
"EDI provides a number of technology based solutions which operate on an administrative and full assessment level”.
Dialogue
There are lots of benefits to using technology depending on what perspective you take. From an awarding body point of view, we are able to make our administration more streamlined, from a candidate point of view, depending on the assessment; we are able to make the assessment more 'real life'. Assessment can be offered more frequently and more on demand. From the centre point of view as the customer, it makes them easier to administer the qualifications, administer the assessments and all the other aspects".
VO
"The qualifications and assessments market is extremely competitive therefore EDI strives to offer value for money whilst staying ahead of emerging technologies. EDI uses technology to improve service levels, benefiting the centres directly in all cases, and in some cases, the learners.
Dialogue
Learners are much more used to interfacing with keyboards, spending less time writing, doing much of their communication socially electronic means of one form or another. One of the benefits of e-assessments is that they are able to use the same sort of teaching and learning methodologies and everyday experiences that they have become accustomed to, to actually carry out the assessment.
They may get results through more quickly, and get some more detailed feedback on their performance.
From the perspective of the learner the sort of benefits and developments really speaking, are about making the assessment fit for purpose.
VO
" The key focus for EDI is improving the service to customers without disrupting what they already do. For iterative improvements to existing systems there are established communication processes which customers are familiar with".
Dialogue
"As far as EDI is concerned, e-assessment offers a better service, a faster turnaround time, more efficient communication and more user friendly management tools, that's the kind of thing that customers are after.
VO
"Accessibility is also an area of focus especially with the introduction of the new equality act in 2010. EDI has to meet the legislative requirements so that accessibility does not become an issue for e-assessment activities"
Dialogue.
Awarding Organisations have to be aware of accessibility issues, ensuring that they still provide equality of access, and that alternative arrangements in hand. There are a number of modifications it can make to technology itself to enable a wider range of individuals to access it but that’s another skill set that awarding organisations have to develop.
VO
" eNVQ is EDI’s web-based electronic portfolio system which allows employers, candidates, assessors and verifiers to load evidence into a multimedia portfolio which can be accessed and managed remotely at any time. GOAL online assessment solution is used in schools to provide interactive and multiple choice online assessments designed to monitor both individual and class progress. The tests, whilst not purely adaptive, contain an adaptive element in that some early questions are designed to pitch the remainder of the questions at the right (national curriculum) level".
"Developing an offer for the 14-19 sector presents interesting opportunities. As an awarding body, EDI needs to respond by ensuring that e-assessment is built into its qualifications. Within the Diploma, the assessment of the practical elements of principal learning present the very real challenge of how to ensure real world, applied assessment contexts for learners, while meeting regulatory requirements for controlled assessments".
Dialogue
"One of the challenges that does need to be taken seriously is looking at how we validly assess the assessment criteria that are emerging in a lot of the new diplomas. These qualifications are supposed to be general qualifications, they are graded qualifications they are not occupational qualifications, they are not competency based and yet some of the assessment criteria are based on actual performance. The assessment opportunity is supposed to be one coherent holistic experience. There is a real challenge here".