Addressing the needs of today's e-learning environments via an open and versatile architecture for assessment

architecture Abstract: Today's e-learning environments are highly flexible in terms of the learning activities they support, the learning resources they use and manage, and the technical means they offer to adapt to the learning situation and the preferences of the learner. Providing feedback through assessment is known as an approach to supporting self- regulated learning in such environments. This paper motivates that assessment in general (and formative assessment in particular) are of high value because they can support self-regulated learning by integrating a feedback cycle. This paper proposes a technology-based assessment platform consisting of an open and versatile architecture called TAO. This open-source system offers the necessary flexibility to cope with the requirements imposed by modern e-learning environments.