Digital testing and development (DTO): meet the captains
The Digital Testing and Development (DTO) team at Npuls works with institutions in secondary vocational education, higher professional education and university education to realise a digitally supported, secure, reliable and future-proof testing process. To ensure that the specific challenges and interests of vocational education, higher professional education and university education are properly represented, the DTO team works with three leaders: Susanne Mans-Oude Kempers, Marjoleine Dobbelaer and Sharon Klinkenberg.
Team DTO
The DTO team is a diverse group. We have already introduced you to the theme leaders. You can find the full team on the Digital Testing and Development page.
Captains DTO
Susanne Mans-Oude Kempers is a teacher, coach and project leader of the Gilde International innovation project at Gilde Opleidingen. The Gilde International project is a completely new educational concept that works with programmatic testing. In this programme, students from five different study programmes work on internationally oriented challenges that provide evidence as the basis for their diploma.
In addition to her work as a teacher and project leader, Susanne will start her Comenius Teaching Fellowship in March 2025: Aware of your own future: develop your own personal and professional identity. This is a research project in which new tools are being developed for coaching conversations to be used in secondary vocational education for career orientation and guidance.
What is the main challenge in vocational education in the field of digital testing and development?
Susanne: ‘The challenge is to set up a digital testing environment that matches the student's world and skills and also supports the educational concepts of the teaching teams.’
Marjoleine Dobbelaer is a senior researcher in the Teacher Qualities research team at Arnhem and Nijmegen University of Applied Sciences. She obtained her PhD with a thesis on classroom observations and is co-author of ADAPT, a tool for measuring differentiation skills among primary school teachers. Marjoleine was previously project leader for various research projects and within the Acceleration Plan for Educational Innovation with ICT. She is also a lecturer in teacher training at HAN University of Applied Sciences. In addition to her role as leader, she is closely involved in the further development of the Vision Tool, which institutions and training programmes can use to support the development of their vision on assessment.
Which aspect of digital testing and development inspires you?
Marjoleine: "I am very interested in the possibilities that genAI offers in the field of assessment, for example as support for formative action. Within the AI & Assessment learning network of the Assessment Competence Network, we discussed, for example, how students can receive interim AI feedback on a written product by working with an assessment rubric in the prompt. I also find AI-generated quizzes as preparation for a knowledge test, or AI as an extra group member who asks critical questions, to be promising applications. The use of AI in the assessment process must be in line with a programme's vision on learning and assessment. I look forward to continuing to work on the Vision Tool and ensuring that this aspect is also properly safeguarded.
Sharon Klinkenberg is co-director of the Teaching & Learning Centre at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. He was chair of the core team of SURF's Community Digital Testing for ten years and is still a member. Sharon holds a PhD in psychometrics and is a statistics lecturer in communication science.
What is your dot on the horizon when looking at the digital testing landscape?
Sharon: ‘There are still many opportunities to make better use of digital testing in higher education. For years now, digital tests have no longer had to be direct copies of paper exams, yet this is still often the case in practice. Over the past 10 years, we have gained experience with digital testing; now it is time to integrate testing and learning.’
Would you like to know more or actively contribute ideas and work on activities related to digital testing and development? Please contact us!