Welcome to the Online-Assessment-Tool Selector (OATS)
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What is “OATS”?

The Online Assessment Tool Selector (OATS) is an interactive online tool for teachers to identify online tools appropriate to their own contexts. It is a resource designed to be used in close conjunction with a second resource, the booklet "Getting it right: Guidelines for Online Assessment", available at: AkoAotearoa.ac.nz Getting it right: Guidelines for Online Assessment. This is a set of evidence-based contextualised guidelines for good practice in design and implementation of online assessment.

Ako Aotearoa’s Northern Hub funded a team of Auckland-based tertiary teaching consultants and academic developers to produce these resources in order to enable New Zealand tertiary teachers to review and redevelop their online assessment practices. The OATS and guidelines were both extensively reviewed by tertiary teachers in New Zealand, and the team is grateful to the many who volunteered to trial them after hearing presentations at various conferences and gatherings throughout 2015 and early 2016.

How can OATS and the guidelines help me?

OATS and the guidelines are for tertiary teachers using, or planning to use, online assessment. Drawn from the New Zealand context, they are designed to either stand alone, or to be used together.

What is online assessment?

For the purpose of OATS and the guidelines, online assessment is defined as the use of online tools in assessment for and of student learning. This includes the use of online tools for assessment tasks, feedback and marking or grading. The guidelines contain case studies where online assessments are used in blended as well as fully online courses.

Getting started

As a tertiary teacher planning to introduce online assessment, you may like to begin by completing the OATS. This will help you identify which online tools may be appropriate to your own assessment context. You may then wish to find out more about deploying the tools selected for you by reading the appropriate sections of the guidelines.

What’s in the guidelines?

The guidelines are in four sections, each of which can stand alone and may be read separately or together as required. The first section, “Getting assessment right”, references key literature underpinning the development of the guidelines. This is followed by a set of 6 evidence-based principles of good practice in online assessment, drawn directly from case studies and referring to the literature. The third section is a set of 10 guiding questions designed to help you consider some of the elements of good assessment practice and how you might translate these to the online environment.. The final section is a set of 12 case studies, each focusing on how a different Auckland-based tertiary teacher uses an online tool for designing and implementing an assessment task. Definitions of each online tool, notes on how it is used for teaching and further useful weblinks appear in the Appendix following the final section.

The Online Assessment Tool Selector (OATS) is one of two outputs of a project funded through the Ako Aotearoa Regional Hub Project Fund 2016. More information is available at AkoAotearoa.ac.nz Project Funding.