Assessing Student Achievement and Progress with Online Examinations: Some Pedagogical and Technical Issues.

Published papers on the area of online assessment have mainly focused on instructors' assessment of online discussion forums or computer-assisted testing in a highly structured environment with a narrow focus on multiple choice or true-false types of questions. With the exponential growth of online courses and many educational institutions looking at recruiting students around the world, the issue of online examination for distant learners can no longer be ignored or indefinitely postponed. In this article, we attempt to help fill this void in the emerging online literature by critically evaluating the merits and concerns, both in pedagogy and technicality, in the use of online examination in a higher level education (postdegree) environment. The examination process described in this article is based on the experience of the authors in design and delivery of such an evaluation system for over six years at the Centre for Innovative Management, Athabasca University, Cananda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]