25/05/2021
Cambridge Assessment English played a key role in an international symposium which brought together experts from the global language learning and assessment sector.
The event was a great chance to consider the challenges and opportunities for language assessment in a post-pandemic world. The international symposium was organised by ALTE – the Association of Language Testers in Europe. It was the latest in a series of international conferences which have become an important date in the calendar for the language testing community worldwide. The regular series of events focuses on assessment across a wide range of languages, including national and regional languages as well sign languages.
The event, which was held on 28-30 April, was the first time it had been held as a completely digital symposium. Thanks to an innovative online platform, Allseated exVO, ALTE reached its largest ever audience, with more than 750 delegates interacting through avatars which enabled them to move around the conference, visit the exhibition, and join in conversations and workshops.
ALTE manager Graham Seed explained, ‘Despite the restrictions of Covid-19 we wanted to continue the ALTE tradition of giving language assessment professionals the opportunity to come together and share ideas about the latest thinking in our field. The state-of-the-art digital platform was a great way of helping to encourage discussions on online testing, automarking, video call tests, remote proctoring, eye tracking and gamification. When you consider the challenges of the last twelve months, these issues seem more important than ever before.’
Opening the event, Dr Nick Saville reflected that the challenge for the future is to focus on what we have learned since the start of the Covid-19 emergency and to focus on a future which is ‘not just different but better’. He explained:
‘Over the last twelve months we’ve all had to find new ways of helping to ensure language assessment continues. This year’s digital symposium was a great opportunity for us to reflect on what has changed, and what is likely to be different in the future. We’ve seen great examples of remote teaching as a response to school closures, with pupils and their parents having to engage in learning from home. This was enabled by digital tech such as computers, tablets and of course lots of Zoom calls. The digital symposium provided a platform to share these experiences and look at how the field of multilingual learning, teaching and assessment can be changed for the better, in a post-pandemic world.’
Other participants who contributed to the plenary session included Elana Shohamy, Professor of Language Education at Tel Aviv University School of Education and Barry O’Sullivan Professor and Head of Assessment Research & Development at the British Council.
ALTE (Association of Language Testers in Europe) is an international charitable Non-Governmental Organisation which promotes the fair and accurate assessment of linguistic ability across Europe and beyond, originally founded in 1989.