Design of a Computer-assisted Assessment System for classroom formative assessment

We describe a number of high-level design decisions that we found essential for a Computer-assisted Assessment System that is to be deployed in school classrooms for supporting formative assessment by teachers and self-assessment by students. In addition, the system needs to provide information to parents. Our design decisions comprise the use of the Open Learner Model approach to make diagnostic information available to the various stakeholders, the use of a modelling methodology to describe assessment methods declaratively (glass-box), and the decision to embed assessment in a flexible manner into current and emerging learning environments. Implications for system architecture are also described.