QCA believes that e-assessment and e-learning plays an important role in the future of education and training. QCA wants to ensure that technology plays a key role in the learning and assessment systems of the future. Technology must provide a valid and reliable learning platform, it must be robust and accessible. Above all, it must improve and enrich education.

E-assessment and e-learning are already here to stay. Employers, training providers, colleges and most importantly, learners themselves require access to learning and to assessment that fits their other responsibilities at home and work. Technology provides the opportunity to offer the flexibility they require and to keep the education and training they access as relevant and up-todate as possible.

In Northern Ireland QCA has embarked on a project that is looking at hardware and software innovation and technological advances that are being utilised for e-assessment in vocational qualifications. This project will support e-regulation policy development and inform advice to awarding bodies by reporting on innovative e-assessment approaches being developed and used by training providers and employers in Northern Ireland. The project will also contribute to the Department for Employment and Learning’s (DEL) future strategy for e-learning.

The case studies presented here from the following four organisations reflect the very different approaches to the introduction and application of technology within a Northern Ireland context:

• Transport Training Services - making technology work for them
• CAFRE - covering the distance on-line
• Apollo Call Centre - a blended approach to a better service
• Armagh College - reaching out to the community using IT

Whilst they are not unique, they do show how a strong vision, a clear understanding of the objectives to be achieved and a whole organisational approach to the strategy can bring success. In almost every case, the organisation has been pleasantly surprised by the very positive reaction of learners and by the impact the development has had on learner participation and achievement.

For each of these organisations, these are major initiatives to ensure that e-assessment and e-learning does not simply invent new technologies which recycle our current, ineffective practices but rather lead and encourage the introduction of new ways of assessing ability and delivering effective learning.

QCA will continue to encourage these developments by providing guidance, support and a regulatory framework that enables centres to be innovative and address the needs of their learners and employers whilst maintaining a robust and reliable qualifications system.

'E-assessment represents one of the most important and vital areas of QCA's strategic planning for the development of assessment in the medium term.'
Mary Curnock Cook, OBE Director of Qualifications and Skills, QCA