The ExCon project: advocating continuous examination

In this paper it is claimed that traditional examination often is destructive to the process of learning. It does not matter how good intentions educators have, it is the way they examine students that will have the strongest impact on how the students learn. The goal of the ExCon project is intervention in traditional examination. The paper discusses an alternative model for understanding assessment and examination of students. Product assessment is questioned as an appropriate approach. Instead it is argued that educators should, to a larger extent, provide the student with questions and other types of feedback during the ongoing activity and use communication as an important element of the examination. For this purpose, a software prototype for a mobile computing device to support the educator was designed and developed. An evaluation of the prototype was performed and the paper ends with some thoughts on the viability of the prototype in supporting alternative assessment and examination.