The use of Computer-assisted and Computer- based Testing to Assess Procedural and Conceptual Knowledge

It is well known by those at the ‘chalk face ’ that learning is not necessarily an outcome of teaching. “Students often fail to spontaneously use what they have learned in a new setting despite the fact that it is highly relevant ” (Schwarz et al., 1999) a phenomenon Whitehead referred to as “inert knowledge” (Whitehead, 1929). However, judicious and appropriate use of assessment, as a way of checking for learning rather than to reveal what students don’t know (i.e. for ‘punishment’!) or simply to produce a rank order, can ameliorate this problem by promoting conceptual understanding and encouraging students to employ deep learning approaches. As the biosciences are essentially practical and experimental subjects, it is important for bioscience undergraduates to develop abilities to acquire and apply procedural knowledge (‘how to do something’) as well as to demonstrate the conceptual knowledge that underpins procedure (cf. Biosciences Benchmark statement). Having learnt from examples, it is then hoped that the student, when faced with a novel problem, should be able t