Arab Educational Information Network

Universities around the world are rapidly and competitively introducing ICT into teaching & learning, management and assessment. E-assessment readiness evaluation is critical to the success of e- assessment adoption and implementation. Therefore, the readiness of the faculty members at Cairo University, Giza, Egypt for implementing e-assessment system was assessed. A valid and reliable constructed questionnaire based on the 5-point Likert scale was developed and used to evaluate their technical readiness for the computer-based assessment (CBA). The mean score 3.41 was treated as the minimum acceptable level of readiness for each item or construct. Indicative colors were used to indicate the level of readiness: 1-2.6= red color (not ready and needs hard work), >2.6-3.4=orange color (not ready and needs some work), >3.4-4.2= yellow color (ready but needs some improvements) and >4.2-5.0= green color (ready, go ahead). 307 Faculty members and teaching assistants belonging to three faculties’ viz., Agriculture (Agri), Physio-Therapy (PT) and Dar el-Olum (Dar) were surveyed. The results revealed that the vast majority of the faculty members possess a smart device and have access to the internet. However, they lack the experience needed for CBA. Their basic computer skills and internet skills were rather satisfactory (3.57 & 4.05, respectively= yellow) but still in need of further improvements. Both CBA skills (2.46) and CBA content (2.83) were not ready yet; the former needs hard work (Red) and the latter needs some work (orange). As regarding the overall technical readiness, the faculty members are not ready so far (3.23, orange) and some work is still needed. The study concluded that the faculty members and teaching assistants at Cairo University are not technically ready so far for CBA implementation and some effort has to be exerted. The present study has gone some way towards enhancing our understanding of the readiness for CBA. However, further research should be undertaken in other relevant areas. (Published abstract)