Text-based sustainable assessment: A case of first-year information and communication technology networking students

The notion of sustainable assessment is to equip learners for the challenges of learning and practice they will face once their current episode of learning is complete. More often than not, portfolio and/or 'direct' observation are preferred assessment format. However, lecturers are increasingly faced with administrative challenges when conducting large-scale assessments, due to the large size of their class. In this exploratory study, we innovatively adapted Cloze question types to 'mimic' real-life scenarios. We observed a (Pearson) correlation coefficient value of r = 0.7 between the text-based and skills assessments of the students. This was further supplemented with a Spearman's Rho value of 0.66 with a two-tailed (probability) value of p ≈ 0. For this reason, we put forward that learning management system platforms can provide a technology-rich environment to designing innovative text-based assessments for relatively large classes.