SSr 25th May 2006 Dept. of Technology in Education wins the National ICT Education Award

The Department of Technology in Education (DTiE) was recently honoured with the National ICT Educational award during National ICT Achievements Awards organised by the Computer Society of Malta. 

The award was received for the Automated Testing System (SSr) which was developed by Mr. Joseph Vella (Subject coordinator) and Mr Emmanuel Zammit Secondary Support Staff.  The system was developed to supplement the written ICT exam.  The system is purely an educational tool implemented in all State Secondary Schools.  It facilitated the process of assessing students individually in ICT skills while completing a practical task using the existing intranet infrastructure.

SSr automatically presents questions to the candidates who answer them hands-on using the computer.  The SSr tracks the students’ response and corrects the answers, collects the results and collates them.

SSr is student centred, teacher friendly, standardizes the assessment, by-passes the manual method of collecting, recording the transcription of results and provides immediate feedback to students.  Results are also collected centrally and analyzed.  The modular approach design of SSr makes this system sustainable, transferable and can be changed from summative to formative assessment. 

The Automated Testing System (SSR) has been designed to facilitate the process of assessing students individually while completing a practical task. This system has been successfully implemented on a national level in all secondary schools in Forms 4 and 5 this scholastic year.

A team of support teachers at the Department of Technology in Education, within the Education Division has developed an Automated Testing System (SSR) to facilitate the process of assessing students individually while completing a practical task. This system has been successfully implemented on a national level in all secondary schools.

The automated testing system was designed to work within the intranet infrastructure of the ICT computer laboratories in schools. As part of their final ICT assessment, students took a test during their ICT lesson, using a computer per capita. Results were collected automatically into one password protected database on the school server and collected remotely into one database at the ICT Centre.

This system eliminated hours of corrections, standardized the assessment, by-passed the manual method of collecting, recording and transcription of results, and provided immediate feedback at the end of every test. Performance in each test item was analyzed on a national level. Further investigations of performance in every school/type of school/gender may be accomplished.

Furthermore, any individual teacher can use this automated testing system as an assessing tool. Test items can be created and plugged into the system. Once placed in a common depository, test items may be shared over the Internet through the Department's website. The modular approach design makes this system easier to be maintained, enhanced and developed further by the developing team within the Department of Technology in Education in collaboration with the ICT Teachers.

The support unit wishes to thank all ICT teachers who gave their feedback so we could improve our product.

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