Aligning Assessment with Curriculum and Pedagogy in Applied Information Technology

This paper reports on one part of the first year of a three-year study into the feasibility of using digital technologies to represent the output from practical assessment tasks in senior secondary courses. The aim was to improve the alignment of assessment with pedagogy and curriculum. Students in seven classes studying the "Applied Information Technology" (AIT) course in Western Australia completed a digital portfolio and a computer-based exam for assessment. All student work was placed into an online repository to be accessed by external markers through a standard web browser. These were marked using a traditional analytical method and a paired comparisons method. Generally the portfolio was implemented without technical difficulty and for the exam only sound recording provided some difficulty. Both methods of marking provided reliable scores with the paired comparisons method being the more reliable. Students and teachers indicated a preference for assessment at a computer whether to create a portfolio or complete an exam. (Contains 3 tables and 3 figures.)