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Investigating Cost-effective, Scalable Online Assessments to Assure Academic Integrity, Privacy, and Access Equity

The rapid, large-scale transition to online delivery in higher education driven by the COVID-19 pandemic has focused attention on the quality of online teaching, learning and assessment.

In this context, the ABDC funded this project to examine the types of online assessments in use in Australian business schools and to develop a framework to evaluate online assessments against a number of key design considerations. Those considerations are:

assure academic integrity;
support a positive learning experience for students;
encourage authenticity in assessments;
allow for the provision of quality feedback;
assure the integrity of student information; and
ensure that all enrolled students have an equal chance to complete the assessment successfully.

This project consisted of a comprehensive literature review of the factors that contribute to quality online assessments, a survey of educators from Australian Business schools and focus group discussions with business educators from across Australia. Our findings led us to modify our framework to include a sixth key design consideration: online assessments must be authentic and assure that students can apply their skills and knowledge to contexts and situations relevant to the workplace. We also extended our understanding of the broader, interrelated contextual factors that influence decisions about assessment design from scale of delivery and resource limitations to include institutional policies and accreditation requirements.

This portal is provided to share our findings with the broader community of educators. We encourage you to read our final report, take a close look at our framework and how it applies to a range of assessment-types with our database of assessment exemplars. To view exemplar online assessments and how they rate against our criteria – head to the Assessment Exemplars. You can also use the Categories on the right hand side of the website to view assessments that meet particular criteria.

If you have an innovative online assessment you’d like to share and have listed in our Assessment Exemplars – please complete submit it here.

Looking for slides from presentations of the framework at various forums and conferences? See the Presentations page.

The project has been completed by a team from the University of Sydney Business School, UTS Business and Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, funded by the Australian Business Deans Council.