Multimodal Representations in Senior Biology Assessments: Twelve Years of Public Examinations in NSW Australia

This study investigates the use of multimodal representations to test for biological understanding in the NSW Australia final secondary school public examination. It forms part of a larger Australian study concerned with the impact of disciplinary and technological innovations on learning, particularly molecular genetics where much knowledge is represented in modalities other than, or in conjunction with language, traditional text and visual representation. The availability of digital technologies and their affordances for learning and teaching of senior high school biology now makes it realistic for examiners to include new and novel representations into assessment tasks. A qualitative analysis of 12 years past biology examinations based on the systematic identification and collation of multimodal representations was undertaken from 2001 - 2012. Findings indicate that despite the ready availability of digital representation in classroom learning and curriculum materials, and evidence of high students engagement with ICT, high stakes written examinations do not make use of such resources. As a consequence students are disadvantaged because their in-depth knowledge and understanding of biological concepts is not effectively demonstrated through traditional pen-paper tests. A move towards online, interactive examinations might be one way to ensure that assessment format reflects classroom learning styles.