There is a new report issued in the US by the Gordon Commission (details below with links to the report). It is interesting to see what they are saying about the changing face of education assessment. There are some great thinkers on the commission including Bob Mislevy, John Behrens and Randy Bennett.

The Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment in Education, established by 
ETS in January 2011 and given a two-year tenure, has released a public policy statement calling upon state and federal policymakers to commit to a long-term effort to develop assessments that place greater emphasis on providing timely and valuable information to students and teachers. See:http://www.gordoncommission.org/rsc/pdfs/gordon_commission_public_policy_report.pdf. 
See also the technical report TO ASSESS, TO TEACH, TO LEARN: A VISION FOR THE THE FUTURE OF ASSESSEMENT:http://www.gordoncommission.org/rsc/pdfs/gordon_commission_technical_report.pdf 
and its Executive Summaryhttp://www.gordoncommission.org/rsc/pdfs/technical_report_executive_summary.pdf. 

The promise of technology for education is that it can enable personalisation of learning. By that I mean that it will allow sequences of learning to be recommended for individual learners and that during the learning, a student's progress will be monitored and evaluated so that assistance can be given at the right time. At the end of the learning sequence, the student and her teacher will receive reports of what she has learned, with recommendations for next steps.

BUT, none of this is possible without assessment of learning both at the macro level (courses and sequences of instruction) combined with micro level assessments of what the student knows and can do right now (to allow for tutoring).

In this blog I want to explore the barriers and opportunities in this space.

I started this blog to muse about the evolving world of intelligent assessment, which is about assessing learning in electronic learning environments. However, knowing me, I'll probably stray off into other related topics as it evolves...

Here's a TED video that a friend and colleague reminded me about at the weekend, in which Daphne Koller talks about Coursera. Towards the end she talks about personalisation of learning which is what intelligent assessment is all about - Enjoy!

Daphne Koller: What we're learning from online education