An e-learning framework for assessment (FREMA)

This article reports on the e-Framework Reference Model for Assessment (FREMA) project that aimed at creating a reference model for the assessment domain: a guide to what resources (standards, projects, people, organisations, software, services and use cases) exist for the domain, aimed at helping strategists understand the state of e-learning assessment, and helping developers to place their work in context and thus the community to build coherent systems. This article describes the rationale and method of developing the FREMA model and how it may be used. We delivered FREMA via a heavily interlinked website. Because the resulting network of resources was so complex, we required a method of providing users with a structured navigational method that helped them explore and identify resources useful to them. This led us to look at how overviews of e-learning domains have been handled previously, and to work towards our own concept maps that ploted the topology of the domain. FREMA represents an evolving view of the domain and therefore we developed the website into a Semantic Wiki, thereby allowing the assessment community to record their own projects and services and thus to grow the reference model over time.