How do we build more trust in Digital Assessment?

For years, digital exams and digital assessment were pitched as a logistics triumph. No more draughty exam halls. Purpose-built venues. Faster and more accurate marking. Huge scalability. The marketing was seductive: universities and exam owners could de-couple exam delivery from location; liberated from the constraints of paper; decisions based on results, not guesstimates.

But the sector has a different issue. We’re not dealing with software problems. We’re dealing with a problem of trust.

A procurement can lead to a robust platform - great support, perhaps deploying remote proctoring, enhanced ID verification. But none of that answers the underlying question being asked by learners and stakeholders: does this process still feel worth trusting?

Additional Test Security Cannot Fix Bad Assessment Design The mistake exam owners keep making is treating digital assessment as a procurement challenge. Instead, they should be demanding better assessment design. Shining a light on qualifications that show a toolkit of different assessment instruments.

Boorish and dogmatic commentators fall back onto essays – either open book or closed. The reality is that too much lightly supervised assessment no longer accurately represents independent learner thought or practice. The reflexive (digital) administrative response is to bolt on more delivery security—more room scans, tighter browser lockdowns, post and pre-event monitoring. Or just stick with a three hour written essay.

We’ve now reached a point where an exam can be secure, but is increasingly ineffectual at measuring learning or ability. But boorish and dogmatic commentators still say paper exams are the only/ purest way.

Security became a blunt, crude substitute for assessment strategy. We’ve reached a point where an exam can be perfectly secure, but has become ineffectual at measuring learning or ability. Preventing a learner from cheating is not the same as proving they actually understand the learning material, and are able to deploy skills to demonstrate this.

The white lies we tell each other I’ve written before about people becoming extremely uncomfortable with digital exams and digital assessment exposing inherent problems with exam and assessment regimes. Digital rarely creates new issues that haven’t already been overcome. A poor paper exam digitised (‘paper behind glass’) simply scales weak design and outdated processes. Instead of asking if an assessment tool or task can reduce admin, many just ask if the software detects cheating. Digital shines light upon entrenched failures, compromises, and white lies we tell each other in exam and assessment systems.

A reliable platform matters, but it’s not just about the software. That’s just a starter. Over three decades of on-screen delivery at scale has taught us that. Software handles the logistics. But it cannot advise you if an aural exam is a better test of professional judgement. Or if an adaptive exam optimises exam sessions.

Stop agonising over digital – ask what are you trying to measure, and select a (digital) toolkit to answer that question.

The next phase of digital assessment must stop obsessing over the delivery mechanism, and start interrogating what the exam or assessment is actually trying to prove. Better exam owner judgement is sorely needed. If that is lacking, assessment technology will just execute old, flawed assumptions—only faster, larger, and with less room for reflection.

Nurturing trust Smart institutions and exam owners are now building out qualification and certifications with a holistic view. Taking a multi-modal approach to better represent a learner’s capabilities. With a prudent mix of formative and summative assessment, it also acts as a contemporary pragmatic ‘AI-moat’ strategy.

Need to protect your qualifications and exams? Use a multi-modal toolkit approach and also achieve a future-ready AI-Moat.

If you’re an assessment leader, challenge your supplier on this. How much time can be liberated for my team? How quickly can I spin up quals and certs to beat our competition? Can a multi-modal approach help me attract new learners? Reference Clayton Christensen’s ‘Jobs To Be Done’ theory: "What job are you trying to get done that causes you to hire this assessment tool?"

And there’s more upside. Take the dull admin out of assessment and give that time back to impactful front-line activities. Helping learners. Engaging with learning centres. Trialling different exam accommodation techniques. Higher order work. Beating your competition. Don’t forget, suppliers are now establishing agentic AI agents that do much of the heavy lifting.

Want to beat your competition? Get an agentic AI front-end connected to all your mission-critical assessment systems. 

The end game is approaching for those that dogmatically cling to trad exam delivery. We’re all trying to spend more time with learners, centres, subject matter experts, higher ed admissions officers, and employers. That liberated time nurtures trust and greater assessment supervision. Isn’t that what we need? When you know your learners, malpractice reduces. This isn’t just about deploying tech. It’s about rejecting a failing system that doesn’t know its learners.

Enhancing assessment design with digital gives us time to nurture better trust and assessment supervision. Isn’t that what we need?

Silly strategy is taking a question out of an exam paper to meet an arbitrary 10% reduction target. And tell ourselves a white lie that it doesn’t really matter. Great strategy enriches the assessment journey that reduces the analogue tangle, but also learns lessons from the digital 1.0 logistical deployments since the mid-1990s.

The sector is already delivering this impending future. I expect dogmatic paper exam traditionalists, who refuse to countenance digital and better assessment design, will be walking back their trenchant opposition. Be kind to them: the headline image is of King Canute.