1. Innovation in Skills Development and e-Assessment Dr.N.Prabhudev Vice Chancellor Bangalore University

2. Among the several critical factors that determine the value an employee brings to an organization, the productivity factor is of primary importance. This productivity factor, which essentially is a measure of the ability to create wealth, is considered to be an important indication of the alignment between an employees skills and the organizational requirements. Consequently, a sound strategy is required for the sourcing and hiring of talent geared towards enhancing productivity. Apart from this recruitment strategy, another means of enhancing productivity is to facilitate current employees to assess and upgrade requisite skills in order to keep up with the dynamic nature of knowledge and technologies.

3. Earlier, the successful accomplishment of these two stages of an employee life-cycle was dependent on age-old, tried and tested techniques of interviewing, paper-and-pencil testing, examinations and so on which proved to be cumbersome, expensive and ineffective. However, with the advent of new technologies, it has now become possible to optimally apply Information Technology (IT) to measure skills, knowledge and understanding and thereby helping to streamline the recruitment and training stages of the employee life cycle.

4. To understand the concepts of skills development and e-assessment, it is important to first understand this often abstract concept called skills. A skill can be defined as an ability or proficiency at a task that is normally acquired through education, training and/or experience. It can at times be synonymous with the related concepts of competence, expertise, knowledge and human capital. There are many different kinds of skills. The supply of skills seems to be less than what would be socially optimal. For decades, education has been artificially divided between the academic and those deemed inferior, who are possibly "good with their hands".

5. Cognitive skills (academic knowledge, long- term memory, the ability to think abstractly) are still considered all that really matter. Verbally, at least, it endorses creativity and innovation and the importance of the soft skills - non-cognitive attributes such as attitudes, values and beliefs, self-confidence, enterprise, creativity, determination and persistence.

6. The study of the development, implementation and management of the computer-based information is known as Information Technology. IT is very important because it deals with the conversion, storage, protection, processing, transmission and retrieval of data. With the advent of IT, companies are no longer forced to gather all their functions in one place. The knowledge- intensive functions such as development and marketing can be sited in countries where the labour market can supply highly educated employees, whilst production itself can be moved to low wage countries.

7. The result is the efficient handling, processing, co-ordination and administration of company resources, which is decisive for the competitiveness of the company. Information Technology and its continuous development has provided the stimulus as well as the medium for supporting the process of skills determination, skills education, progression and development through the innovative development of IT-based assessment techniques and tools.

8. E-assessment In its broadest sense, e-assessment is the use of information technology for any assessment-related activity. This definition embraces a wide range of student activity ranging from the use of a word processor to on-screen testing. Due to its obvious similarity to e-learning, the term e-assessment is becoming widely used as a generic term to describe the use of computers within the assessment process. Specific types of e-assessment include computerized adaptive testing and computerized classification testing. E-assessment can be used to assess cognitive and practical abilities. Cognitive abilities are assessed using e-testing software; practical abilities are assessed using e-portfolios or simulation software.

9. E-assessment is becoming widely used. It has many advantages over traditional (paper-based) assessment. The advantages include: 1. lower long-term costs 2. instant feedback to students 3. greater flexibility with respect to location and timing 4. improved reliability (machine marking is much more reliable than human marking) 5. greater storage efficiency - tens of thousands of answer scripts can be stored on a server compared to the physical space required for paper scripts 6. enhanced question styles which incorporate interactivity and multimedia.

10. There are also disadvantages. E-assessment systems are expensive to establish and not suitable for every type of assessment (such as extended response questions). The main expense is not technical; it is the cost of producing high quality assessment. IT-based skills development and E-assessment procedures will undoubtedly become the standard for assessment and development processes as they can provide an efficient and effective means of assessing skills and facilitating the development of skills by our talent pool.