A Bridge too Far or a Bridge to the Future? A case study in online assessment at Charles Sturt University

The in-house development of an online assessment tool, OASIS, has provided a unique opportunity to research the use of online assessment in teaching and learning across the university. The developing relationship between IT staff, educational designers and academics serves as a model for integrated and evolving management systems which demonstrate how academic research is informing improvements in applying educational technology. A framework, the Bridge Support Framework for Online Learning, is proposed for the support and implementation of online learning systems.A case study in online assessment in a microeconomics subject describes the development of the Bridge Support Framework in response to a ‘systems’ failure when using the online assessment software tool during a major assessment event for a large external student cohort. As CSU moves towards the implementation of an open source learning management system (LMS) in 2008, this range of online assessment methods will increase. Along with this increase in availability of assessment tools comes the increased responsibility for supporting the implementation and development of a university-wide learning management system. It is here that our case study and the proposed Bridge Support Framework have potential value; learning from history to improve processes and procedures for the future.