Whenever I watch an old film like Ryan’s Daughter, it always brings home to me just how much teaching and learning methods have evolved. In those days, education was about chanting, and lifelong learning was unheard of. Any requirement to be involved in further training stopped as soon as you qualified in most professions you were entering.

Nowadays, CPD is fast becoming mandatory for members of practically every trade or professional body and the internet is an almost ubiquitous training and development tool for people – whether they are studying degrees, a foreign language during their lunch break, or keeping up to date with the latest developments in a particular profession.

Most people are accustomed to using e-learning systems, and comfortable with the idea of computers replacing a teacher for at least some of the time. However, what is not so commonplace, at least not yet, is the use of technology to automate the assessment of a candidate’s performance. For professionals undertaking CPD programmes, or for students of vocational qualifications such as NVQs, it is increasingly recognised that e-portfolio technology has the potential to revolutionise the way an individual’s competency is assessed.

Ken Boston, the head of the Qualification Curriculum Authority, affirmed this: “On-screen assessment will shortly touch the life of every learner in this country. Advances in technology have given us the opportunity to access and record aspects of human achievement that have been difficult to capture in the past.”

But as more organisations wake up to the idea of online competency testing, it is important that assessment systems are developed to take on the role of the ‘servant’ of the learning process rather than the ‘master’. I say this because earlier systems were not designed around the way people work and think, and forced upon the learner a contrived and often unintuitive learning journey.

So, the challenge for developers of assessment or competency-testing systems is to undertake the necessary observational research and consultancy at the outset to ensure the technology platforms they create are flexible enough to respond to the users’ requirements, rather than dictating what those requirements should be.

Measuring an individual’s competence to perform a particular job is obviously a really good thing and acts as a form of insurance. In the past, too many professionals were deemed competent simply because they could pass a one-off written exam. Thankfully, this is no longer the case, but creating a robust system of gathering information about what a person can do is vital, and very different to awarding a pass or fail mark.

Such a system must be able to assure the quality of the judgments that are made, while allowing the user to demonstrate with clear, tangible evidence what they have learned from a training module and, in particular, how they have reflected upon their learning and put this into practice. For example, a radiographer would provide CPD evidence by saying “I have attended the following course” and submitting an attendance certificate as proof, but the competency testing would continue with the candidate saying “I have reflected on my knowledge by putting the following things into practice”, or “I have changed the way I work: I used to do X and now I do Y”.

His submission would be finished with an independent testimony from a certified witness, such as an audio or video recording from a supervisor or manager, or by a user who had experience of the candidate providing a particular service. Technology enables this evidence to be more easily captured directly from the candidate’s workplace, e.g. on a hospital ward, with screen shots showing evidence from a PC application, or even, as is the case with members of the Institute for Field Archaeology, by submitting photo or video evidence taken with a mobile phone. With recent advances in mobile technology, it is even feasible for a candidate to take pictures of his work and go straight online to post the evidence in an e-portfolio.

Today, e-learning and assessment allows us to train, develop and assess our current and future workforce continuously; to capture, share, and manage knowledge and skills of the professionals who work in our organisations, colleges, and universities, and to get the right information to the right people, when and how they need it. But the supporting technologies must always be designed to enhance and support the way people are used to learning and working, rather than the other way around.

Chris Peat OBE is director of business strategy at Axia Interactive Media. He can be contacted on +44 (0) 1924 516830, at c.peat@axiainterative.net or via www.axia interactive.net

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