Technology - Taking exams forward
Transcript
Martyn Lewis CBE, Commentator
Each summer, these shelves were once stacked with the hopes and dreams of a million teenagers. Each of these envelopes would be full of GCSE and A-level exam papers which end up here at the AQA. They are England's largest exam board, awarding around half of all GCSEs and A-levels. This process is changing and now, more and more papers are being marked electronically or 'e-marked'.
In this room, marked papers (or scripts, as they are known) are being checked by a team of administrators. In the height of summer exams the AQA has 700 people working here. They add up the marks and make sure the examiners have added up correctly. It's a time consuming process and, of course, involves tons of paper.
Cathy Green, Senior Administration Officer
I think the real problem is just the amount of paper really. It's hard to track where things are when they're not in the building.
We have to employ teams of staff just to ring examiners and find out where scripts are. If it's all electronically we can track for ourselves where the scripts are.
Commentator
Using technology to cut down on all this paper work and make exam marking more efficient is a key priority for the AQA.
Mike Cresswell is the AQA Director General. He believes it's vital for exam boards to change to meet the needs of students in the 21st century. To that end, AQA set the first ever online exam in science.
Mike Cresswell, AQA Director General
They complete the tasks on screen, their responses come back to us and we mark them almost instantly. That again produces all sorts of quality and control advantages for us: in the end to the benefit of the students because they want reliable results and we want to give them reliable results.
Classroom
Okay everyone, time starts now.
Commentator
Of course computerised exams may reduce the paper burden and speed-up marking, but isn't there a risk of cyber-cheating?
Mike Cresswell
When you are in there on the computer doing our tests you cannot access any other part of that computer. You can't go out on the web, you can't look at Microsoft Word, you can't do anything else.
The communications protocols for information going backwards and forwards are industry standard ones that are at least as good as the ones the banks currently use.
Commentator
AQA is spearheading the growth of electronic marking wherever this can improve the reliability of assessment. More and more of their examiners now receive scans of exam papers and can mark the script on screen. These marks are then checked by a senior examiner and processed by the AQA.
Nick Goddard, Senior Examiner
As a team leader there are obviously great implications on quality control for what the marker is doing and the main forefront of what the exam board wants to do is consistency of marking.
Commentator
AQA is also utilising technology to enhance its class-leading customer service and has launched an online support site called 'Ask AQA'. But where will all this technology end?
Mike Cresswell
Once computers are a part of every student's normal educational experience I think they will become the way assessment is done.
Commentator
But whatever the future holds, the AQA is determined to use technology to ensure students get faster, more accurate results and an even better service.
