Speakers

The e-Assessment Question 2014 Full Speaker Details

Day One 26th March 2014 click here for day two speakers

Denis Saunders, CEO and Founder, Calibrand. Chair
Denis has developed Calibrand the currency for talent® into a leading e-Assessment solutions organisation that operates internationally. Calibrand’s ‘e-Assessment anytime, anywhere and on any device’ ethos has been successful in diverse global markets such as financial services regulation, government compliance, medical revalidation, awarding bodies, corporate talent management and international IT certification

Patrick Craven, Head of Learning and Assessment Design – City & Guilds
He has over 25 years experience in the field of educational technology. From the design of educational resources with the Microelectronics Support Unit, National Council for Educational Technology and BECTa to running of post-sales technology support departments for KRCS (Apple Computer reseller), his career has always addressed the fusion of education and new technologies. For the last 15 years this work has focussed on the specific field of learning and assessment technology research and development for the RSA Examinations Board, OCR Examinations, Cambridge Assessment Group and now he leads on Product Research and Design for City & Guilds. This role considers the growing impact of Policy and new technologies on the learning and assessment industry. It also identifies initiatives to enable City & Guilds to develop and extend the range and quality of learning and assessment products and services they offer. Throughout this period he has remained committed to the notion of ‘fit for purpose’ assessment based on evidence-based research. Patrick currently sits on the Board of the e-Assessment Association and the UK eAssessment Advisory Group and is a member of the planning committee for the Computer-Assisted Assessment Conference and European ATP Conference.

Matt Wingfield, MD, TAG Assessment and Chair eAA
Matt has over twenty-five years experience within the UK education market including seven years as a primary school teacher and ICT Coordinator and more recently over sixteen years experience working in a variety of roles for TAG Assessment, a leading provider of e-Portfolio/evidence based e-assessment solutions for schools, F.E., H.E. and work-place training, Matt has built-up significant understanding of the issues relating to assessment within education. Matt is dedicated to building close and highly productive partnerships with key stakeholders within the wider education market, so that through promoting greater awareness of the innovative e-assessment solutions available, he can continue helping educators, learners and policy makers understand how e-assessment can be used to enhance and improve teaching and learning.

Bruce Ogilvie, Caspian Learning
Bruce Ogilvie is a seasoned e-learning professional with over a decade's experience, driving Business Development with many Industry leaders, including Blackboard, Turnitin and Learndirect. Bruce considers himself a real geek when it comes to Learning Technologies, working with only true innovators in the e-Learning arena. In addition to Learning Technology, Bruce has extensive experience in the e-Delivery, Support and Management of Vocational Training & Education. Bruce is a passionate advocate for the use of technology to drive efficiency, improve quality and deliver ROI on learning.

Andrew Boyle, Alphaplus
Andrew Boyle has worked for several large awarding organisations and the qualifications regulator. He has been Head of Research at Ofqual and at City & Guilds. He is currently senior consultant with AlphaPlus Consultancy Ltd. Andrew is a Fellow of AEA-Europe, and a Visiting Fellow of the London University Institute of Education. The Guardian newspaper described Andrew as ‘Ofqual’s e-assessment expert’ and a New York thinktank said that Andrew was ‘a leading researcher on e-assessment’. He has published many journal articles, conference papers, research reports for government bodies and so on. He has also led numerous projects for government and commercial clients. Across the spectrum of e-assessment, Andrew has researched: computerised adaptive testing, the machine marking of natural language, sophisticated items types in e-assessment, why people do (or don’t) take up new ideas, measurement models for e-assessment, the formative use of, and the regulation of e-assessment.

Oliver Chesher, Founder and Managing Director, Galibier PR.
Oliver is a strategic communications specialist, who has been retained by some of the biggest names in education to advise and run PR campaigns nationally and internationally. Oliver has worked with clients including universities, e-assessment providers and awarding bodies to enhance their reputation, credibility and influence, and to campaign for change in perception, behaviour and commercial results.

Paul Ballard and John Bendel, 3DI
Paul has been consulting, selling, managing and leading in technical translation and localization for 15 years. He established 3di in 2002 to combine his two areas of professional passion: his belief in the value of well-designed technical information and making it easier to deliver multi-lingual versions of products to new markets. He brings the perspective of an information designer to helping organisations achieve the successful transition from tactical translation to the more strategic – and profitable – approach of localization. His guiding principles are Fewer Words, Better Words, Good Tools, Clever People.

John launched his own international communications business in Barcelona in 1991, just before the Olympic Games, which he ran for nearly twenty years. He has a particular acumen for supplying solutions which ensure that all types of organisation from small companies, who are new to translation, through to blue chip companies can see top line revenue growth as a result of their improved multilingual communications. A graduate of Cambridge University, John speaks five European languages fluently and has gained in-depth knowledge of how foreign markets operate in his many years out of the UK. He is fascinated by the mix between communication and international trade.

Alastair Pollitt, Partner, Cambridge Exam Research
Alastair Pollitt is Director of Cambridge Exam Research, an independent consultancy specialising in technical and psychological aspects of educational assessment. For fifteen years he was responsible for educational test development and research in the Godfrey Thomson Unit in Edinburgh University, with special interests in assessment theories, and the factors that control the difficulty of exam questions. In 1990 he moved to Cambridge University’s Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics before becoming, in 1994, Director of the Research and Evaluation Division at UCLES (Cambridge Assessment). He still works in those same two areas, particularly in the context of novel approaches to both formative and summative assessment: most recently he has published papers on the use of Comparative Judgement as a radical alternative to marking. He is a Fellow of the Association of Educational Assessment – Europe, vice-Chair of AQA’s Research Committee, and sits on two advisory committees for Ofqual.

John Kerr, Chair
John Kerr is former CEO of the Edexcel Foundation. John trained as a lawyer and held senior positions with the London Stock Exchange and FSA before his career in education. At the Edge Foundation John sponsored 3 city academies and commissioned the Edge Hotel School. John is advisor and strategy consultant for a number of government agencies and private education bodies in UK and internationally.

Mark Robinson-Sivyer, Managing Director E-Exams Ltd
Mark has worked in sales and marketing for many years in both the UK and abroad. Having run a number of his own businesses in hospitality, he was the Principal involved in the start-up of the C&B chain in Australia. Moving back to the UK he owned and operated a number of successful businesses in Commercial Surveying and Security Consultancy and Hospitality, before founding Exam on Demand. He has been MD for 13 years and has now founded E-Exams Ltd. The new company is focused on developing and providing courses for individuals, along with a partner company, iCompass, who need skills to further their employment prospects. He lives in Sussex with his wife Jo, has 4 children, is a Governor of a Primary school and is a Trustee for 5 others.

Colin Bell, Co-Founder, iCompassUK
Colin has nearly 15 years of experience helping to facilitate change for disadvantaged adolescents and their families. Working in both the Caribbean and the UK, he recognises the challenges that young people face when building their interpersonal skills, and the need for them to develop life strategies and find a meaningful place in the working world. In his role as an Intensive Surveillance Supervision Officer, Colin currently works with at-risk young people in the London borough of Islington. He also continues in his capacity as educator of at-risk youth across the country with the iCompassUK programmes, which he co-designed and developed. His goal is to extend the reach of iCompassUK so that it becomes an integral part of every disadvantaged young person's training and development into adulthood.

Geoff Chapman, Director, Calibrand
Geoff has over 15 years international management experience, of which 13 years have been in e-Assessment. He has worked in 15 countries and has delivered speeches on e-Assessment in the USA, Europe and the UK. Geoff was responsible for the e-Assessment research projects 'Driver and Barriers' and the follow-up 'Acceptance and Usage'. As Business Development Director for Calibrand, Geoff is responsible for leading a team to create and protect revenue from new and existing customers such as Learn Direct, Construction Skills and NEBOSH in the UK and internationally. In June 2011, Geoff was appointed as the e-Assessment Association's marketing lead, developing relationships with corporate sponsors, increasing the Association's reach with its membership and boosting its presence through social media and developing the Association's website. A graduate of both University of Salford and Staffordshire University, Geoff also led the successful entry to win the 2011 e-Assessment Scotland Award for Facilitating e-Assessment.

Sid Spalding DRS, Chair
Sid is Sales Manager for DRS responsible for business in the UK and overseas. With a foundation in Engineering and IT, Sid has focused on examinations and assessment since joining DRS in 2005. Out of work, Sid enjoys cycling, paragliding and photography.

Jay Carpenter, UK Manager, Turning Technologies
In this session, the presenter will share his global experiences in high-level student response implementations. Examples of school and university implementations on how the technology plays an important role in teaching and learning will be discussed. The session will highlight the company’s formative and summative assessment delivery tools that help educators assess understanding and report student progress indicators. Session will conclude with discussing how student response supports effective pedagogical learning theories and explore years of research that supports response technology as a comprehensive learning solution. Jay was recently nominated to serve on the University of Mount Union (US) Future’s Advisory Committee. He is an avid world traveler, sports fanatic, and passionate about philanthropy.

Oli Trussell, Princes Risborough School, Bucks
Oli has created Google Form templates using free tools that enables teachers to automatically mark student responses to an online quiz. With around 5 minutes input from the teacher it can provide every student who takes the quiz with personalised feedback that highlights strengths, how to improve and questions that prompt a response (SIR feedback). This can be stuck in books or emailed directly to students automatically. It has drastically cut marking time and massively improved effectiveness of feedback. It automatically breaks down student understanding into user-determined topics enabling effective intervention and more efficient planning. Using this sort of assessment as a pre-topic test along with flipped videos has allowed more class time to be spent doing more problem solving and projects, offering small group and individual support, and developing 'softer' skills. Not only is this preparing us better for the new curriculum, but we are able to quickly and easily identify progress being made."

Andy McAnulla, Service Design Director, BTL Group Ltd.
Andy has worked in the assessment industry building e-assessment software platforms for over 13 years. Andy’s background is in software architecture and he is also disciplined and qualified as a Scrum Master for Agile product development, ITIL for service management and Prince 2 for project management. In 2005 he was awarded “Young IT Practitioner of the Year” by the Chartered Institute of IT (BCS) for his software development and technical management skills. He was a board member of the e-Assessment Association for 3 years and is the Director of Service Design at BTL Group Ltd. where he is responsible for defining and driving their overall product strategy and roadmap.

Day Two 27th March 2014 click here for day one speakers

Colin Deal, Chair
After systems and business development roles with a number of the largest computer manufacturers, was in on the early stages of the computer based assessment industry, and remains involved on an independent consultancy basis. The initial take-up of these global PC based systems, through invigilated Test Centres, was by the computer systems, communications and software suppliers who needed to establish professional certification programmes. These programmes allowed them to measure the knowledge and skills of their support staff on a global basis in the context of their own fast-changing products. Later adopters were organisations needing to move away from traditional exam processes; where feasible, moving to an on-demand approach. Thus he has been involved in a wide variety of applications within the last twenty years, ranging from the novel, e.g the UK’s Driving Theory Test, to the high stakes exams aimed at lawyers, nurses, doctors, bankers and other professionals where the need has been to preserve the rigour of the existing exams yet take advantage of features which only IT systems can provide.

Kate Hill, Prometric
Kate Hill, M.Ed., is Senior Manager of Test Development and heads teams of test development professionals within Prometrics' Test Development Solutions group. Kate has 30+ years of experience in exam development and administration and in managing organizations involved in professional certification and licensing. Prior to joining Prometric, Kate served as Director of Certification for the Rehabilitation Engineering & Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA); headed the Testing, Licensing & Certification Unit of CPS Human Resource Services; served as Executive Director of the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA); and served at executive level for the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) and the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). Kate has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Liberal Arts from Widener College, and a Master of Education degree in Educational Psychology/Psychometrics from Temple University. She is a published author and editor of publications for a variety of professional organizations in the field of professional evaluation, certification and licensure, education and accreditation.

Aisling Smith, Prometric
Aisling Smith M.Sc., is a Test Development team leader at Prometrics' test development solutions group, based in Dundalk Ireland and has been with Prometric for the past 2 years. During this time she has guided many high profile clients, from a variety of market segments, through the development of accredited certifications and had acted as an external consultant on test development. Prior to joining Prometric Aisling worked as a research design and data consultant, primarily in the healthcare industry. She studied Psychology at University College Dublin and went on to attain a Masters degree in Cognitive Science.

Garrett Sherry
Garrett Sherry is Vice President & General Manager EMEA at Prometric. He has served in a voluntary capacity on the executive committee of the European Association of Test Publishers since 2010, and was Chair of the EATP annual conference organising committee in 2013

Che Osborne, Director, Questionmark
Details to follow

Martyn Leese, Chief Operating Officer, Infinitas Learning - The German Approach
With over 30years experience in high volume service delivery, examinations processing, computer based testing and education publishing. Currently the Chief Operating Officer at Infinitas Learning BV he has previously worked at senior level at Pearson PLC where he was responsible for the modernisation of exam processing systems, delivery of National Curriculum Testing and Pearson VUE world-wide, securely delivering millions of high-stakes tests annually. Infinitas Learning, an education publisher with leading positions in a number of northern European countries is in the process of transition from a traditional textbook publisher to a full service provider of interactive content, both digitally and folio. Martyn will discuss the German ‘Dual’ apprenticeship system, some of the challenges encountered and an innovative digital approach to address those issues.

Prof. Phil John, Heriot Watt Scholar Programme, Chair
Prof. Phillip John, SCHOLAR Programme, Heriot-Watt University, was born in the Rhondda Valley, South Wales into a mining family. He is currently Professor of Chemistry and Senior Dean of Science and Engineering at Heriot-Watt University. In the thirty-five years that he has been with Heriot-Watt he has published over 150 papers and eight patents and supervised 28 PhDs and had extensive learning and teaching experience. Ten years ago he led the Chemistry team in the creation of e-learning materials inside the SCHOLAR courseware (scholar.hw.ac.uk). Since 2002 he has managed the SCHOLAR programme, and is Chair of the legal consultative body (the SCHOLAR Forum), which delivers complete Higher and Advanced Higher e-learning courses to students in virtually every state secondary school in Scotland, the independent sector and FE Colleges. The SCHOLAR team has successfully integrated the research findings of the PASS-IT assessment programme into the SCHOLAR courseware in over 20 subjects in mathematics, science, business and modern languages and represents a major deployment of formative e-assessment.

Stephanie Musson, Education Executive, Royal Society of Chemistry and Peter Clarke, Durham University
Stephanie Musson is an Education Executive at the Royal Society of Chemistry. She is working to develop an online assessment tool to incorporate into Learn Chemistry, the Royal Society of Chemistry’s website offering thousands of online resources for teaching the chemical sciences. The project aims to allow teachers and students to access self-marking formative assessments which will support those studying the chemical sciences. Stephanie graduated from the University of Glasgow with an MSci Chemistry; she trained as a chemistry teacher, gaining a PGCE before going on to complete a Master’s in Education, both at Homerton College, University of Cambridge.

Peter Clark is currently a freelance education consultant with expertise in assessment and science education. He is also undertaking a PhD at the School of Education in Durham University; this involves creating diagnostic assessments in chemistry which will be deployed online. Peter studied molecular biology at the University of Glasgow, and then trained as a chemistry teacher at the University of York. He taught in state comprehensive schools for 12 years. Peter worked at Durham University’s Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM) for over ten years, where he developed assessment software. He has also successfully completed an MSc degree in information technology at Teesside University.

Chris Eaton, Lisa Russell and Bob Gardener, LaserLearning
Chris Eaton has after many years involvement with both primary education and adult training, now Commercial Director of Laser Learning as well as Head of Finance and Commercial Strategy at the largest of the government’s Free Schools.

Lisa Russell is Project Manager at Laser Learning and oversees development of learning materials across all courses offered on the Laser Learning platform.

Bob Gardner has taught children from 4 to 18 in his 40 year career in Education. He was appointed Mathematics Advisor for Berkshire and was involved in training during the introduction of the National Curriculum. He has also had a successful career as an author of ‘pop up books and further developed the idea of interactive learning by leading the Team that produced ‘Maths Whizz’,, the creative ILS software still widely used in Primary Schools. His background of teacher and innovator meant he was chosen to write the scripts for the lessons in Functional Skills.

Ken Currie, CAPDM
Ken is Director of Business Development at CAPDM Ltd. and a Director of Opus Learning. Ken spent 30+ years at Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt Universities in a research career in Artificial Intelligence (as Assistant director of the AI Applications Institute) and Business Education (as one of the founding directors of the Edinburgh Business School), before joining CAPDM in 2007. In this time he worked with many international clients and consortia - in Japan, the US, across Europe, and in the UK - and was instrumental in establishing Heriot-Watt as a global provider of education. He has a long history in distance and online education stretching back to 1991 when he was the key designer of the highly successful on-line Heriot-Watt MBA programme and its globally successful undergraduate Management Programme. He continues this work in online distance learning research, design and implementations with CAPDM - specialists in the use of standards, specifically XML, in online distance education. Ken is a director of Opus Learning who develop, package and deliver online SQA approved HNDs and other awards for an international market.

Martyn Roads, Chair eAAAG
Martyn is an independent education and assessment consultant. He spent 13 years in Further Education, developing and managing a wide range of vocational programmes before joining BTEC in 1994. In 2001, he was responsible for managing, on behalf of a consortium of UK Awarding Bodies, the successful bid for the development of the Key and Basic Skills national tests in the UK. These were the first tests to be rolled-out in the UK using e-assessment. For the past 8 years, Martyn has been researching and implementing the use of IT in assessment which has included working with a consortium of organisations on the development of a range of screening and initial assessment tools for major UK employers. Martyn was co-author of the Qualification and Curriculum Authority’s (QCA) “Use of ICT in Assessment” report to the Department for Education and Skills in 2002 and has worked with QCA on a number of projects including supporting the production of the e-Assessment – Effective Practice Guide aimed at supporting the use of e-assessment in the QCF. Martyn has also undertaken a number of other projects related to the development of vocational assessment development for awarding bodies. Martyn was also Chair of Becta’s e-assessment advisory group.

Tim Stirrup, CEO, Mathspace UK
Tim Stirrup is a qualified teacher of mathematics, who has worked in schools, in business and with online learning for over 25 years. He was recently a Director of the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics and prior to that worked for 5 years during the development of the London Grid for Learning. Assessing mathematics online: It just isn't working out. Working mathematically online has proved a challenge for many years. For example, Bradford, Davenport, Sangwin (2009) wrote about this specifically in the context of HE. Too often students are relegated to answering multiple choice questions. In the meantime, the useful working out teachers rely on to check understanding is lost, and if students get stuck on a step of a problem, where do they go? This session will examine Kurt Van Lehn's theory of Inner Loop Learning, suggesting how students doing mathematics tasks online can benefit from handwriting recognition technology, appropriate step by step guidance as required, immediate feedback. It will demonstrate how teachers can now see the working out essential for checking understanding, making sure that we are not actually damaging learning through our online assessments.

Maureen Emmett, EMSKILLS
Maureen has worked in education and training for over 30 years having started her career as a part-time business studies lecturer in a large FE college, where she drew on her previous experience of working in the London Stock Market to engage and enthuse her learners. She went to become a senior leader in the college, specialising in curriculum development and core subjects. She moved into the private sector in 2003 when she joined Edexcel to lead on their Skills for Life Strategy. Her legacy from this role was the introduction of onscreen assessment and recognising the value of Adult Literacy and Adult Numeracy as engagement qualifications for learners in schools. Maureen was headhunted by QCA in 2008 and joined the senior team as a strategy manager to support the development of Functional Skills qualifications. Maureen now runs her own company EM Skills which trains in effective delivery of functional skills, develops functional skills resources and writes functional skills assessment papers for leading awarding organisations.

Robert Byatt, Technical Lead for e-Assessment, CEM
Rob is involved with developing software that will deliver top quality, useful assessments to schools that help to improve the learning of pupils. He is very keen that these systems are simple and schools find them as easy to use as possible. Before working at CEM, Rob worked delivering software projects for IT services firms.

Linda Steedman, CEO, eCom Scotland
Linda originated eCom in 1996 as part of an EU funded project – the business was spun out in 1999 and purchased via a management buy-out in 2001. eCom provides eAssessment and eLearning delivery and management to organisations, governments and awarding bodies. Linda is currently Chair and leads the responsibility for development of eCom’s product development. Her professional life combined teaching, lecturing and educational research, in ICT, engineering technology, science and mathematics. Linda experience includes FE College Management, Instructional design for curriculum and course development, leadership, business planning, marketing and corporate sales, mainly in the education & web development sector eCom provides a range of products and eLearning management services designed specifically to enable the remote learner to gain knowledge, skills and certification. eCom Scotland enables on-line learning and assessment management, control and monitoring of the complete learning processes through a range of communications products which are delivered in a secure hosted environment with access to support web dashboards. Delivering just-in-time learning is the norm, where eCom strive to deliver Just-for-me learning, via personalisation and mobile devices and currently provides these services throughout Europe. Similar services are offered worldwide through a global channel partner network. eCom has more than 17 years of experience in building international learning applications. For further information please visit: www.ecomscotland.com

John Winkley, Alphaplus
John has worked for over 10 years in e-assessment developing three businesses (AlphaPlus www.alphaplusconsultancy.co.uk, BTL Group www.btl.com and Virtual College www.virtual-college.co.uk) which now enjoy market leading positions in learning and assessment. In his current role at AlphaPlus he advises UK and international clients on e-assessment and wider assessment matters, as well as leading the development of qualifications and assessments. UK clients include: Edexcel, City and Guilds, SQA, NCTL, UFI learndirect, BBC, DfE, BIS, Ofqual, STA, JISC, the Home Office, the Driving Standards Agency and awarding bodies in various professional sectors. His work in e-assessment includes both formative and summative settings, at all education phases (primary to HE), and vocational settings, and covers a wide range of assessment instruments – on-screen objective tests, on-screen essays, e-portfolios, simulation-based assessment and on-screen marking. John is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors and a founder board member of the e-Assessment Association.