Denise has over twenty years experience in designing, researching and evaluating online and computer-based learning in Higher Education. She is a Professor of Technology Enhanced Assessment and Learning in the Open University’s Institute of Educational Technology.
She is currently leading the UK’s contribution to the Adaptive Trust e-Assessment System for Learning (TeSLA) project, which started in January 2016 https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/six-million-pound-european-union-eu-project-aims-to-stamp-out-cheating-in-online-assessment. The overall objective of the TeSLA project is to define and develop an e-assessment system, which ensures learners authentication and authorship in online and blended learning environments while avoiding the time and physical space limitations imposed by face-to-face examination. The TeSLA software will support any e-assessment model (formative, summative and continuous) covering teaching and learning processes as well as ethical, legal and technological aspects. TeSLA will offer to educational institutions, accrediting agencies and to society, an unambiguous proof of learners’ academic progression, authorship and authentication during the whole learning process.
She is also co PI for the HEFCE funded Learning Gains Project with Surrey and Oxford Brookes Universities. It is a three year longitudinal study assessing the suitability and scalability of the Affective-Behaviour-Cognition (ABC) Learning Gains model across the HE sector in England.
She has just completed directing the SAFeSEA project. http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/safesea/ The aim of this research was to provide an effective automated interactive feedback system that yields an acceptable level of support for university students writing essays in a distance or e-learning context. She has edited four special journal issues on e-Assessment for BJET, LMTECI, IJCELL and IJEA. She chaired the International Computer Assisted Assessment Conference from 2010 until 2013. Her work has received international recognition as she holds visiting chairs at the Autonoma University, Barcelona and the British University in Dubai. She is also a serving member of the governing council for the Society for Research into Higher Education.
