The Digital High Stakes Assessment Programme in Cambridge University Press & Assessment is developing digital assessments for UK and global teachers and learners. In one development, the team are making decisions about the assessment models to use to assess computing systems knowledge and understanding. This research took place as part of the…

Language assessment is increasingly computermediated. This development presents opportunities with new task formats and equally a need for renewed scrutiny of established conventions. Recent recommendations to increase integrated skills assessment in lecture comprehension tests is premised on empirical research that demonstrates enhanced construct…

Computer adaptive testing is intended to make assessment more reliable by tailoring the difficulty of the questions a student has to answer to their level of ability. Most commonly, this benefit is used to justify the length of tests being shortened whilst retaining the reliability of a longer, non-adaptive test. Improvements due to adaptive…

In 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic the higher education sector, in the United Kingdom and internationally, transitioned to online assessment, at a speed and scale which might have been unimaginable under normal circumstances. The priority in the sector was to ensure that fundamental principles of assessment, including integrity, were…

This paper reports reactions by candidates to the use of online proctoring (OLP), 'invigilation', in the delivery of high-stakes English language examinations. The paper first sets the scene in terms of the move from face-to-face to online modes of delivery. It explores the challenges and benefits that both modes offer, in terms of accessibility,…

In this paper we report the results of an experiment designed to test the hypothesis that when faced with a question involving the inverse direction of a reversible mathematical process, students solve a multiple-choice version by verifying the answers presented to them by the direct method, not by undertaking the actual inverse calculation.…

We introduced voluntary wiki-based exercises to a long-running cognitive psychology course, part of the core curriculum for an undergraduate degree in psychology. Over 2 yearly cohorts, students who used the wiki more also scored higher on the final written exam. Using regression analysis, it is possible to account for students' tendency to score…