[Translate to Englisch:] E-Assessment ermöglicht flexibles E-Learning (c) Wes Hicks/ unspleash

E-Learning and E-Exams for Northrhine-Westphalia

The state government of Northrhine-Westphalia has selected five projects for the programme “Digital Tools in Higher Education. ” With it: the project Harness.nrw. Under the leadership of the software institute paluno of the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), existing applications for e-assessment are to be brought together in such a way that they can be used nationwide.

In times of Corona, but also beyond, online teaching is becoming more and more important at our universities. A significant component is the e-assessment – the automated evaluation of exercises and exam performances by the computer.

The North Rhine-Westphalian universities offer a variety of different solutions for computer-assisted evaluation, which are primarily based on the specific requirements of individual subjects. In the field of chemistry, e.g., chemical structural formulas have to be drawn and evaluated; for computer scientists, an e-assessment software evaluates program codes. The applications not only detect mistakes, but also provide didactically-based feedback based on the students' competences. This makes them very special in some cases, and it is not to be expected that there will be a single e-assessment solution for everyone in the future.

The objective of the Harness.nrw project is to enable all universities in NRW to take advantage of already existing solutions. For this purpose, they are modularized in such a way that the individual components can be docked to other e-assessment solutions. The basis will be a modern software architecture based on (Micro-) services, allowing a modular setup of different independent services. This solution is to be linked to the emerging “Online-Landesportal für Studium und Lehre” and shall be usable for all NRW universities.

Over a period of three years, Harness.nrw is funded by the about four million euros provided by the Ministry of Culture and Science (MKW) and the Digital University of North Rhine-Westphalia (DH:NRW) for the programme "Digital Tools in Higher Education. " The project is managed by the paluno working group of Prof. Goedicke of the University of Duisburg-Essen. Project partners are RWTH Aachen University, University of Applied Sciences Niederrhein, University of Wuppertal, Distance-Learning University of Hagen and University of Siegen.

 

More Information:

Link to the press release of the MKW : https://www.mkw.nrw/system/files/media/document/file/2020-06-09-pm-F%C3%B6rderlinie-Digitale-Werkzeuge-Hochschullehre.pdf

Contact persons:

Prof. Dr. Michael Goedicke, michael.goedicke(at)paluno.uni-due.de, Tel. 0201-183-4681

Dr. Michael Striewe, michael.striewe(at)paluno.uni-due.de, Tel.: 0201-183-4682