On 13 and 14 September, UNIwise held the second-ever WISEcon at the Science and Industry Museum, Manchester, bringing together people who are passionate about learning technology across all levels of HE and from across Europe. The event was a great success, and it was really good to be able to meet our colleagues and customers in person after so long.

Day One

After a welcome from UNIwise Co-founders and Executive Directors Steffen Skovfoged and Rasmus Blok, attendees turned their  attention to the first plenary session of the conference. Helle Schroll, Head of Student Services, University College Lillebaelt, and Sue Attewell, Head of EdTech, Jisc, kicked us off with a session entitled ‘Assessment Rebooted: Reflections on 2020 and Beyond.’ Helle and Sue spoke about the advantages of digitalisation in the HE sector, with Helle noting that University College Lillebaelt’s experience with WISEflow pre-pandemic was helpful in the transition to online learning, for both students and teachers. Helle sees opportunities from forthcoming WISEflow enhancements to authoring and marking experiences to support increased engagement across her institution. Before turning her attention to the future of assessment, Sue Attewell gave an overview of the impact of Covid-19 on the UK education sector. Sue contended that the ideal ‘direction of travel’ for assessment should be: ‘assessment of learning’, ‘assessment for learning’, and ‘assessment by learning.’ Refocusing from institutional quality assurance (assessment of learning) to learning design ensures the right things are assessed at the right times (assessment for learning). Following this, the aim is to create a learning experience where the formative and summative elements work well together, with students fully involved in the process (assessment by learning).

In the first breakout sessions, Katharina Feigl, Student Recruiting, Vienna University of Economics and Business, led an excellent session  on using WISEflow for entrance exams. According to Katharina: ‘WU Vienna is a very modern and tech advanced university, but we didn’t think of online digital entrance exams before we came across WISEflow and UNIwise!’ In another breakout session, Mariann Holmslykke, Head of Section, Aarhus Universitet BSS, and Susanne Vestergaard Bunk, Special Consultant, Aarhus Universitet BSS, discussed their experience using WISEflow. Mariann and Susanne were curious as to whether 'more tests can be handled and streamlined using FLOWseries, and how to digitise on-site exams using WISEflow.' The last of these three breakout sessions featured UNIwise’s own Rasmus Nørgaard. Rasmus shared the progress on the evolution of the WISEflow API and how  the integration client is being maintained and supported alongside the API.

In our afternoon breakout sessions, Joanne Moles, Head of Assessment Delivery, UCL, and Professor Simon Walker, Academic Lead, UCL Arena Centre for Research-based Education, explored the many facets of implementing and using digital assessment at UCL. According to Joanne, ‘lots of effort went into training and support because there's no point having a toy that no one knows how to use!’ In another room, Michael Priestley, a research student in the School of Education, University of Durham, gave an overview of a qualitative study he led, alongside Hannah Slack of the University of Nottingham, entitled ‘Online learning and assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic: exploring the impact on undergraduate student well-being.’ The last of this second round of breakout sessions was delivered by Gunhild Raunsgard, Leader of Exam Unit, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, and Sarah Lombrant, Operations Developer, Örebro University. This session explored the ways that WISEflow improved the administrative efficiency of HVL and Örebro. Gunhild and Sarah then gave recommendations based on what they had learnt, offering advice to attendees who may still be in the formative stages of their digital transitions.

The first day of the conference concluded with three strategic sessions from senior colleagues based in the UK. Professor Tim Quine, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education), University of Exeter, delivered his keynote on the role of artificial intelligence in digital assessment, presenting both an optimistic view of the potential benefits AI could provide the HE sector, and an analysis of the potential risks it could pose. There are challenges to maintaining academic integrity with the use of AI, and AI excels at ‘narrow tasks’ but can be a ‘slow and demanding learner’ with a ‘short memory.’ Tim believes that the area of greatest promise for AI in a digital assessment context is through AI teaching assistants, as machine learning continues to improve, citing one study in which students at a given institution could not tell the difference between human teaching assistants and an AI assistance bot. The only area of any difference was that the AI did not need to sleep, so was available at all hours!

Dr Klaus-Dieter Rossade, Associate Dean, Director Assessment Programme, Open University delivered the penultimate session of the day, which looked to the future of assessment. Klaus-Dieter rightly contended that ‘the pandemic made us adapt and innovate exciting practices, as well as making us think about the future of assessment.’ Assessment must be ‘relevant, adaptable and trustworthy’ if it is to be effective and student-facing, he argued, and a key part of this is reducing focus on high-stakes exams; this can be promoted through the use of authentic assessment. Klaus-Dieter closed the session by outlining three principles for student wellbeing: minimal anxiety and maximum excitement, moments of joy and pride, and minimal power distance between students and academics. He left the crowd to ponder the question: ‘if you are anxious, how can you really show what you have learned?’

The final keynote of the day came from Professor Sally Brown, Emerita Professor, Leeds Beckett University. She began her session with the statement: ‘we cannot go back to how things were before the pandemic!’ Sally presented her views on how to improve assessment in the future by laying the groundwork now to promote authentic assessment. One part of this, Sally believes, is maximising the effectiveness of the feedback cycle, by providing feedback that is both dialogic and agentic. Furthermore, she believes that ‘we need to create tasks that help students feel they are starting to act as a participant in the disciplinary community’ - this can again be guaranteed through the use of more authentic assessment types. Sally rounded off her talk by providing attendees with various examples of how to construct exam questions and course material with authenticity in mind and noted that using ‘buzzy verbs’ such as ‘interpret, research and review’ should help to turn the focus away from simple recall and regurgitation in examinations.

After such a busy day, all were ready to head to the WISEcon22 drinks reception in in the interactive gaming exhibition currently being held at the Science and Industry Museum. Attendees and UNIwise staff had the chance to play on some retro gaming consoles, from the original Atari to the new PlayStation Five, whilst mulling around and discussing the day’s events.

Evening drew closer, and dinner was served in the main exhibition hall of the Museum. A short speech from Steffen and Rasmus – mostly concerning wine – was followed by a delicious dinner under the vaulted ceilings of the Museum.

Rumour has it UNIwise-green lanyards were spotted on revellers out on the town until the wee early hours of the morning, but we can neither confirm nor deny this.

Day Two

Day two kicked off with a plenary session titled ‘Digital Assessment: Why all the Strategic Attention?’ This  panel discussion featured Derfel Owen, Director of Change and Improvement, University College London; Gwen van der Velden, Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor (Education), Warwick University; and Jon Strømme, Digital Assessment Lead, SIKT. All three speakers offered interesting insights on their own digital assessment journeys with WISEflow, alongside their views on what the future of assessment might look like, and why it is so important that we focus on it at this crucial time. Gwen presented three parameters for the successful realisation of benefits in terms of assessment: inclusion must be key, there must be fewer academic misconduct issues due to less of a desire to cheat, and academic integrity must be maximised. Derfel contended that in order to promote authentic assessment, we must ‘create a way that students can make good choices about the environments they work in; this is one of the core aspects of inclusivity.’ This session closed with panellists giving advice to those on their digital assessment journeys. Jon commented that we must accept that ‘digital assessment is a fact of life,’ and act accordingly, with Gwen stating that ‘a small team of really committed people is key – these people must understand the different levels of change involved.’ Derfel concluded by reflecting on the fact that students want and deserve a committed digital experience.

UNIwise’s own Kurt Gammelgaard Nielsen, Director of Development and Maintenance, followed with a talk on cybersecurity threats to HE, with a particular focus on phishing. Kurt explained to attendees the threat that phishing posed to the education sector, before highlighting several recent cases linked to the Silent Librarian. He also presented a set of recommendations for how to raise awareness of phishing on an institutional level: ‘instead of IT churning out phishing campaigns, we need to talk to academics and faculties to work out how to effectively implement campaigns in line with students.’

During WISEcon22’s final round of breakout sessions, Sulanie Peramunagama, Digital Assessment Adviser, Brunel University London, and Tara Potier, Senior Lecturer Clinical Sciences, Brunel University London, shared their best practices for using rubrics in practical clinical observational exams, including a hands-on demonstration of how to use multiple rubrics at once. In a second session, Carlton Wood, Deputy Director - Assessment Programme, Open University, and Mary Donoghue, Business Process Lead, E&A Programme, Open University, led a talk on effective stakeholder engagement prior to introducing WISEflow for exams, also featuring some insights from Dr Klaus-Dieter Rossade. During this talk, Carlton and Mary explored their journey to online exams and the usefulness of their WISEflow briefings with UNIwise’s Training and Consultancy team. This led to the development of an FAQs list for academics across the Open University, which they recommended as an important step in aiding faculties during a digital transition. In the third and final breakout session, Lezel Roddeck, Academic Programme Director Foreign Language Communication, Bucerius Law School, ran a session on teaching law with tech: reflections on flipping the classroom in a legal English course for German law students. The study she ran found that students felt that a blended digital approach ‘improved the quality of interactions’ and ‘empowered’ them to take a 'hands-on approach' to the course.

In the final of our plenary sessions, Malcolm Bonnici, Assistant Registrar, University of Malta, Mark Farrugia, Senior IT Specialist, University of Malta, and Victor Buttigieg, Associate Professor, University of Malta, gave an overview of how they  assisted academics to transition from papers to flows. Each of the speakers discussed their plans of action before beginning the transition, offering perspectives from the registrar’s office, the IT department and the academic side. Matching WISEflow with the institution’s procedures, training administrative staff, and ‘helping each other out’ were all identified as key steps. The conclusions that were drawn outlined that infrastructure needs to be enhanced to promote WISEflow usage, with WISEflow further identified as both good for distance learning and effective for multiple assessment types.

Finally, Mads Stenhøj Andresen, Chief Architect at UNIwise, took us through the WISEflow roadmap. Mads highlighted the transition to a thematic roadmap, with development taking place on a number of key themed areas at a time. Mads believes that themes promote focus, transparency and quality, in turn improving the services we provide to our customers. Mads then went on to outline the main themes that are currently being worked on before finishing by informing attendees that each institution will now have its own dedicated client-facing section within Sycamore, our internal development need platform.

With the final plenary session completed, all that was left was for Rasmus and Steffen to give their concluding remarks on WISEcon22 and look to the future of WISEflow as we continue to work in close partnership with our customers and further our quest to digitise exams for all.

We want to thank everyone that came to WISEcon22 and made the conference such a success. We’ll see you again soon!