The decision-making process regarding implementation strategy – whether to conduct a short trial, embark on a pilot program, or jump into an immediate full-scale deployment – is critical. This blog post explores the factors institutions should consider when making this important decision.

At Inspera, we have worked with institutions across the globe who have started in different places and at different sizes to achieve their ambitions of digital enablement by using technology to enable innovation in their pedagogy.

 

How Do I Decide Which Option is Right for Me?

The temptation can be to assume that starting as small as possible is the best way to grow. Forgetting that it has the drawback of requiring far more cycles of training, implementation and buy-in. There are five questions to consider when deciding where to start:

  1. What am I comparing with? Is it an existing platform or pen and paper?
  2. What am I trying to achieve through a digital assessment platform and/or integrity software?
  3. What do I need to replicate from my current practice?
  4. What do I need to eliminate from my current practice?
  5. How am I going to measure the success of implementation?

 

Understanding Which Option Suits Your Institution

Short Trial

Why consider a short trial?

  • Quick evaluation: A short trial offers a rapid evaluation of basic functionality, allowing you to experience the core features firsthand.
  • Low initial investment: With minimal resources required, a short trial is a cost-effective way to assess the platform’s suitability for your institution.
  • Fast decision-making: Swiftly gather initial feedback to make informed decisions on the platform’s potential.
  • Quicker path to full scale: Where you have an established process, a trial gives you the assurance of platform fitting into your ecosystem and provides innovation opportunities for your faculty.

Examples where a trial is effective:

  • You already deliver formative and/or summative digital assessments through an LMS or other platform. A trial gives you the ability to see what your exams, coursework, tests, quizzes, take-home assignments and portfolios would look like in Inspera Assessment. Educators can test useability and workflows in authoring, delivery, grading and feedback. You can see what the simple unified student experience looks like, first hand.
  • You already have an originality or similarity tool for assessing potential plagiarism and want to see a different way of evaluating student submissions. Inspera Originality displays a wide range of metrics to allow your educators and integrity checkers to make better decisions on the critical issue of academic integrity.
  • You already use a remote proctoring service for your exams and want to see what a greater degree of flexibility can offer you. Inspera Proctoring offers both live and recorded proctoring with your choice of providing your own proctors, or using ours. Environmental security can be enhanced with a lock down browser, 360 degree room scan and a second camera.

 

Pilot Program

Why consider a pilot program?

  • Real-world evaluation: A pilot program allows for in-depth evaluation in a real-world context, providing valuable insights into the platform’s performance on a larger scale.
  • User feedback: Gather feedback from a diverse user base.
  • Issue identification: Identify potential challenges and areas for improvement, ensuring a smooth transition to full-scale deployment.

Examples where a pilot is effective:

  • You are digitizing assessments for the first time, or making significant changes to existing assessments that are already digital. Here you need the time to evaluate changes over an assessment cycle to see the effectiveness of change on your educators and students.
  • You haven’t used remote proctoring before and want to introduce it into your institution. In a pilot you can try out the many configurations of Inspera Proctoring with your educators and students to find the optimum setup to ensure exams with integrity, balanced with privacy.

 

Immediate Full-Scale Deployment

Why consider full-scale deployment:

  • Potential for Immediate Impact and Benefits: Realize the full potential of our platform quickly, allowing for accelerated advancement in teaching and learning.
  • Demonstrated commitment: Showcase a strong commitment to technology integration and innovation within the institution.
  • Reduced training cost and time: Train a wider cohort of super-users at the same time who can then mentor and support the institution.

Examples where immediate full-scale deployment is effective:

Full-scale deployment doesn’t have to mean implementing Inspera on every course for every student on day 1, but gives all educators access to the ecosystem from the start. Some will begin by using it on formative assessments integrated with your LMS. Others will create an assessment path by bringing together a series of assessments to grade as a whole. Those educators that are ready, will better digitize exams or make them digital for the first time.

Whichever option you choose, Inspera provides support, a client community, and visibility of how we continue to develop our ecosystem to support advances in assessment.

Written by Ishan Kolhatkar

January 8, 2024