Is e-assessment valid and reliable?
There is nothing inherently invalid or unreliable about e-assessment but the limited applications of e-assessment to date has resulted in the validity of e-assessment being questioned. The focus on multiple choice questions has meant that certain types of knowledge (the higher order cognitive skills) are sometimes neglected but most types of knowledge and understanding can be assessed using objective questions. In fact, used properly, e-assessment can be more valid than traditional assessment (see below). E-assessment can improve reliability. Research has shown that machine marking is more reliable than human marking and much more consistent from year-to-year. In general, more care goes into the construction of e-assessments than their paper counter-parts due, in part, to the greater scrutiny that e-assessment is subject to than traditional forms of assessment.
