The Centre for Schooling and Learning Technologies (CSaLT) at Edith Cowan University (ECU) was asked in 2016 to be the Western Australian arm of a national e-exam project. This project used a bespoke exam system installed on a USB-drive to deliver what would have been traditional paper-based exams in an enclosed computer-based environment that was isolated from the internet and any resources other than those provided by the lecturer. This paper looks at the two exams chosen by the Western Australian group for the trial; a programming exam for pre-service computing teachers and an occupational health and safety exam for pre-service design and technology teachers. Both groups were drawn from the Graduate Diploma in Education course at ECU. The paper looks at the nature of the exam environment and the procedure for creating e-exams. It also outlines the exam procedures used and examines the feedback provided by both the lecturers and students involved. Conclusions are drawn about the suitability of the e-exam system and improvements are recommended as well as a discussion about e-exams and digital assessment more generally.

This article reports on an investigation to advise a teacher education institution on the feasibility of having a “Bring Your Own Digital Device” policy for students. The investigation built on components of two research projects while adding the comprehensive testing of representative potential hardware and software platforms. The initial emphasis was on identifying the digital technology demands of our teacher education courses. A representative range of potential devices was tested against these demands. At the time of testing, all laptop devices were found to be adequate but only the iPad was adequate in the mobile range. In a survey of a sample of students, nearly all owned an appropriate device but most made limited, if any, use of it at the university