English
Русский
Prof. Vladimir Navodnov, Director, National Center of Public Accreditation, Russia, Prof. Galina Motova, Deputy Director, National Center of Public Accreditation, Russia
This article considers the use of the international academic competition for higher education students (the Open International Internet-Olympiad – the OllO project) as a powerful means for higher education institutions to demonstrate their quality both at home and internationally. The specific major points of the paper are (a) implementation of the Open International Internet-Olympiad as a wide-scale initiative for student outcomes assessment on the basis of inquiry-based tasks; (b) the use of the Open International Internet-Olympiad as a productive tool for identification and recognition of higher education programs focusing on the needs of academically talented youth; (c) what has been achieved and learned. Three-year experience of conducting the International Internet-Olympiad (2008-2010) allows considering it as a way for improving and assuring the quality of professional education on several levels. First, the Internet-Olympiad enables educational programs to assess their students’ progress and achievements in developing complex skills relating to different subject fields. Secondly, the project serves to clarify, reinforce, and evaluate attainment of the professional education programs’ goals. Finally, the project reflects the global trend toward student outcome authentic assessment as a vehicle for demonstrating competency on national and international professional education standards. The article reveals some implementation issues, examines the advantages of the web-based assessment technology, and in particular, potential benefits of extending the OllO project to higher education systems of the Asia-Pacific Region.
Introduction
Enhancement of educational quality is only possible under the condition that proper environment is created for demonstrating the quality, identifying best practices, benchmarking, and determining the direction of the national higher education systems’ development in the global context. Accordingly, certain mechanisms and tools should be developed to ensure that providers of higher education have adequate opportunities to demonstrate to the society the quality of the programs they deliver with regard to the national and international standards of professional education.
As pointed out in Guidelines to Standard 1.3 of Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area, it is “important that assessment is carried out professionally at all times and that it takes into account the extensive knowledge which exists about testing and examination processes. Assessment also provides valuable information for institutions about the effectiveness of teaching and learners’ support” (Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area, 2009). Student learning outcomes assessment is of paramount importance for quality assurance systems at the stages of self-evaluation and external evaluation.
One of the initiatives for providing higher education institutions (HEIs) with the opportunities to demonstrate the quality of their programs through learning outcomes assessment is the Open International Internet-Olympiad for Higher Education Students (the OIIO Project), aimed at identification and recognition of educational programs focusing on the needs of academically talented youth.
Method
The Open International Internet-Olympiad for higher education students is an international academic competition in different subject fields in which students from different countries participate online at one and the same time. It is a wide-scale assessment of student learning outcomes with extensive use of relatively inexpensive computer technologies.
For the Olympiad purposes the following has been created by the date:
- The Olympiad technology based on the Internet use;
- A special database of Olympiad-type test tasks (characterized by a high degree of complexity)
specialized websites www.i-olymp.com (in English) и www.i-olymp.ru (in Russian); - special software for administration of the Olympiad procedures;
- training simulator to prepare students for participation in the Internet-Olympiad;
- methods for developing tasks for the Internet-Olympiad.
The Internet-Olympiad is held in three rounds. The First Round is institutional; its main goals are (a) to popularize science among students providing interesting elegant tasks and the student contest; (b) to select talented students to promote their further involvement in research activities; (c) to draw faculty’s attention to the needs of the gifted and talented youth.
HEIs carry out the Internet-Olympiad at any time convenient prior to the beginning of the Second Round. The Olympiad is held online, and immediately after it is over the rating lists regarding each particular HEI are compiled. The students who get the best results (about 10 %) are invited to participate in the Second Round.
The Second Round is regional (or national in case of small countries). It is conducted in a certain number of selected (so called “basic”) HEIs, which should be geographically available (to minimize the students’ transportation costs) and equipped with the sufficient number of computers with the Internet connection. Like the First Round, the Second Round is held online. The difference between the two rounds is that for all the selected “basic” HEIs, the Second Round is organized simultaneously on the same day, at the same time. After the Second Round is finished, the results from all the “basic” HEIs are gathered and processed. An integrated rating list with regard to all participating HEIs is formed in a relatively short time. Students who get the best results are selected for the final Third Round of the Internet-Olympiad.
Team championships were held in 2010: each “basic” HEI formed one or more teams to take part in the online competition. A special teleconference was organized so that the competing teams could see each other.
The Third Round of the Internet Olympiad is national and international. The tasks are proposed by participating HEIs. The best tasks are then selected and integrated into the final task pool by the Jury. In 2010 the Third Round was held simultaneously in four cities: Harbin (for students from China), Khabarovsk (for students from the Far East Region (Russia), and Korea), Yoshkar-Ola (Russia), and Ariel (Israel).
Close-type test tasks (computer-based assessment) are used for the first two rounds of the Olympiad. For the third round either open type test tasks are provided (assessment by teachers), or both close type and open type tasks, which helps automatize part of the assessment process. For the time being, the Internet-Olympiad is conducted in a relatively small number of study fields (Mathematics, Informatics, Physics, Chemistry, Mechanics, Strength of Materials, and the Russian Language), where the tasks can be comparatively easily formalized and assessed using a computer-assisted system. Besides, the subject-matter of the disciplines is rather established and, in many respects, invariant for most national higher education systems. In order to ensure the high level of fairness of the results, the Internet-Olympiad is conducted with regard to a certain number of professional education profiles: humanitarian, economic, agrarian, technical, and specialized.
The working languages of the Open International Internet-Olympiad are English and Russian, but the use of other languages is also possible (locally). For example, for conducting the Internet-Olympiad in 2010 Chinese and Hebrew were used in addition to English and Russian. More specialized sites can be developed in future.
Results
The OIIO project was very well accepted by the academic community in Russia and abroad: in 2010 ninety three teams from 18 countries participated in the event including the CIS countries, China, Korea, Israel, Poland, Rumania, Brazil, Australia and others. The International Olympic Committee was created to ensure the objectivity of the process and results of the Olympiad. The Committee includes leading researchers and scientists in the subject areas and interdisciplinary fields.
The Open International Internet-Olympiad demonstrated how highly interested HEIs are in making the quality of the education they provide available to all the interested parties: higher education sector, employers, students and prospective students, international HEIs etc. Education institutions motivate their students to participate in the project, which can be regarded as evidence of the HEI’s openness to new ideas, initiatives aimed at the educational quality enhancement and assurance. If students of a HEI show stable high results in one or several subject areas or preparation profiles, that means that systemic coherent exemplary quality work has been and is being carried out in the HEI relating to revealing and actualizing the potential of academically talented students. There are all grounds to say that such HEIs are highly motivated for achieving exemplary level of educational quality.
Conclusions
As a member of the international quality assurance community the National Center of Public Accreditation strives for promoting good practices in the maintenance and improvement of quality of higher education nationally and worldwide, including the Asia-Pacific region. Three years of implementing the OIIO initiative allow considering the Open International Internet-Olympiad for Higher Education Students an effective tool of identifying best practices in achieving excellence in professional education, which in its turn, provides opportunities for benchmarking for comparative research purposes both nationally and internationally.
The OIIO project is directly in line with the current global trend towards provision of equal access to higher education to all social categories of students. In all probability the project is going to broaden its geography and the number of participating HEIs. Extending the experience of the Open International Student Olympiads to the Asia-Pacific region would promote strengthening the quality of higher Education in the region, and the visibility of different national higher education systems on the international arena.
References
Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (2009) European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (2009), 17.
