Veröffentlichungen und Tagungsbeiträge

E-Assessment of students’ competence in Germany - current state and future chances

Johannes Hartig, Nina Jude, Astrid Jurecka, Eckhard Klieme& Detlev Leutner

Paper presented at the 11th biennal EARLI conference in Nicosia, Cyprus, August 23-27 2005.

As in many other European countries, the movement towards educational reforms has recently become quite strong in Germany. By monitoring the level of competencies which students actually achieve, policy makers want to identify strengths and weaknesses of the educational system, to increase the overall outcome level and to reduce inequalities. Recent large-scale studies on students’ competencies reveal the need of state-of-the-art concepts and instruments for diagnosis and evaluation to support those educational reforms. While newly developed performance standards are currently implemented in the German educational system, their evaluation is still pending. Appropriate assessment methods need to be developed and implemented. One very promising developing area in the field of educational assessment is the use of electronic assessment in various forms. Recently, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research has commissioned an expertise on the state and possibilities of using different techniques of electronic assessment to test students’ competencies. Within this expertise, currently available techniques and methods, likely developments to come, as well as problems regarding practical limitations within school and acceptance on the part of students and teachers will be will be explored and summarized. The acceptance of electronic assessment methods and teachers’ computer literacy are among the most important things that must be considered in the preliminary stages of the development and research of new technology- based systems. Those variables were assessed with an online-survey for German teachers. The outcome of this survey and the implications of the results for the German educational system will be discussed. A specific focus of this paper will be the chances and problems to implement various forms of electronic assessment within schools, the possible uses of e-assessment for standard-testing within an educational system, and the reflection of the current state and future chances for electronic assessment in Germany.