Year 12 exams to become interactive and adapt to student answers, new SACE Board chief says

YEAR 12 exams will become interactive, with students working through problem-solving scenarios in a computer system that adapts to their answers, the new SACE Board chief says.

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YEAR 12 exams will become interactive, with students working through problem-solving scenarios in a computer system that adapts to their answers while also delivering hints and feedback, the new SACE Board chief says.

And the system could eventually be so advanced that students of a given subject will no longer need to sit the exam at the same time to guard against cheating.

New SACE Board chief Dr Martin Westwell

Prof Martin Westwell, an expert in science education who will take up the chief executive role in January, said the move to electronic exams “allows us to change the sophistication of the questions”.

“(In the past) we would teach them something, and then ask them a question in a way that was similar to how they learned it,” he said.

“What we are asking students now is to use their learning in ways they haven’t thought about before. Our assessments have got to move in that direction as well.”

English Literacy Studies will be the first to have an electronic exam next year. Seven more subjects will follow by 2020, by which time a third of all students sitting exams will do at least one on computer.

While initially they will be similar in content to pen and paper exams, Prof Westwell said much more “adaptive” exams would be introduced in as little as five years.

He said they would more accurately determine students’ abilities, for example by offering hints that allowed students to progress to the next stage of a problem, rather than have them lose all marks “just because you didn’t know the answer to the first bit”.

Scenario-based exams could deliver problems with certain resources and restrictions, such as a budget.

“The system can say ‘you have overused your resources, go back and think about it again’,” Prof Westwell said.

“(Or) ‘you’ve suggested this response. Somebody else has suggested that, why is yours better than theirs?’ That flexible and dynamic use of knowledge can be done online.”

However, he added: “We don’t just want to get carried away with the technology, we want to make sure it’s assessing the right thing.”

Prof Westwell, who was the inaugural director of the Flinders Centre for Science Education in the 21st Century and has been a SACE Board member since 2012, said a combination of high-level maths and social skills would be the key to success once students left school. For that reason, he foreshadowed a move toward more school-based, group assessments in maths, making students work together to solve problems.

Asked if a space industry subject could be added to the SACE after the hype around the International Astronautical Congress, Prof Westwell said it would be “foolish of me to rule it out” but stressed space themes could already be explored within several current subjects.