FCT plans the use of Remote Assessment Systems in higher education

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FCT is currently carrying out a series of actions that will help validate the possibility of using Remote Assessment Systems (RAS) in higher education. This pilot project is being developed by FCCN, FCT's National Scientific Computing Unit, and was triggered by the urgent need to promote remote assessment solutions for higher education institutions (HEIs), due to the abrupt mass migration to distance learning caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

SARs provide reliable identity verification and monitoring options for accurate academic assessment, whether to remotely validate learning in an educational program or to organize large-scale assessments remotely. As part of theINCoDe.2030 initiative's"Nau – Sempre a Aprender"(Nau – Always Learning) project, a project is currently underway to contract mature platforms that have been developed and operated for several years in higher education institutions around the world with needs similar to ours.

Four different platforms are being studied and compared, with the process being conducted jointly with representatives from universities and polytechnics, under the coordination of the FCCN unit team, which guarantees access to the SARs under analysis and promotes solutions so that the process can be completed as quickly as possible.

As there is no "tailor-made" solution that guarantees to cover all the different needs presented by HEIs, such as online proctoring, live proctoring, auto proctoring, identity verification, recorded tests, and integration with LMS (Moodle, EdX, etc.), the selected solutions will be tested for one month, financed and purchased centrally, and with real tests from HEIs that have already been identified (and others that may join), which will allow between 1,000 and 3,000 tests to be carried out for each solution, depending on the format chosen, for a total of 3,000 to 9,000 tests.

Once this process is complete, HEI officials will submit a report with the results, which should include the lessons learned and good and bad experiences identified by teachers and students.

Another webinar is being planned as part of the Metared initiative, to be announced shortly, which will mark the start of the project and provide details to the various stakeholders on how to request access to the platforms.