FCT plans to use Remote Assessment Systems in higher education

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 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

SARs provide reliable identity verification and monitoring options for trustworthy teaching assessment, whether to remotely validate the learning of a syllabus or to remotely organize large-scale assessments. As part of the "Nau - Always Learning" project of the INCoDe.2030 initiative, the activation of a project focused on hiring mature platforms, with several years of development and operation in HEIs around the world and with needs similar to ours, is underway.

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

As there is no "tailor-made" solution that guarantees to cover all the different needs presented by HEIs, such as options for online proctoring, live proctoring, auto proctoring, identity verification, recorded tests and integration with LMS (Moodle, EdX, etc.), the selected solutions will be tested for a 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 to 3,000 tests for each solution, depending on the format chosen, for a total of 3,000 to 9,000 tests.

At the end of this process, the heads of the HEIs will present a report with the results, which should include the learning, good and bad experiences identified by teachers and students.

A further webinar is being planned as part of the Metared initiative, to be announced shortly, which will mark the start of the project and in which details will be given to the various agents on how access to the platforms can be requested.