LMS vs. e-assessment platform: what is the difference?

An LMS is intended to help groups of students or staff manage learning processes, monitor progress and achieve learning goals.

E-assessment platform / exam platform

In contrast, e-assessment platforms or digital exam platforms specialise in measuring knowledge and skills by means of interactive exercises and exams. They offer detailed and usable insights into the current level of knowledge within an organisation, employees’ individual achievements and the quality of the exams and questions themselves. An e-assessment platform is not geared to managing learning content like an LMS, but rather to providing advanced testing features and in-depth analyses and insights.

Why are the two types of platform often confused?

Usually, an LMS will also offer an exam or quiz module. That means that knowledge of the learning content offered can also be tested, and some organisations even use the testing feature in the LMS for more high-stakes tests. They will of course reach the platform’s limitations far sooner, because this is precisely where an e-assessment platform sets itself apart from an LMS.

An exam platform offers more opportunities to create authentic test content and to collaborate with several authors, assessors or planners. There are more possibilities to prevent and detect cheating during and after the exams, and far more detailed analyses, so that, in addition to the students’ knowledge and skills, the quality of the exam itself and the exam questions can be analysed too.

In other words, an LMS has much broader features, and an e-assessment platform mainly focuses on measurement and providing usable insights.

How do the two platforms fit into the educational ecosystem?

In practice, an exam platform is typically integrated into an LMS. This can be done very quickly and easily using LTI 1.3, Single Sign-On or an API integration.

From the LMS, a user will click on an automatically generated link to the exam platform, complete the test, and then the score is sent back to the LMS. As such, the LMS remains the “master” in the learning ecosystem, but you have many more possibilities for practising and testing, and you get detailed insights into knowledge and how it is evolving within your organisation. In other words, integrating an LMS and an e-assessment platform in this way offers the best of both worlds.

E-assessment platform offers extra possibilities

As already mentioned, an e-assessment platform offers more possibilities for measuring knowledge and skills than an LMS. We explain some of the differences below.

A constantly growing item bank

Fully-fledged e-assessment platforms possess an extensive item bank to manage reusable practice and exam questions. Experts can add, manage and revise questions with inbuilt version management and collaborative tools. Questions can easily be hidden from unauthorised users to avoid them becoming public before the exam. Modern e-assessment platforms also offer AI features to support the process of designing new questions.

Wide range of question types

An advanced e-assessment platform offers many types of questions, from generic types (such as multiple choice) to highly specific ones (such as voice-controlled questions), and it supports automatic, semi-automatic and manual correction processes. The wide range of interactions, which include selecting, clicking, dragging, filling in, speaking and listening, allow the author to create authentic exam content.

Powered by AI

With inbuilt AI features, a smart e-assessment platform can help with importing existing questions, generating new questions or suggesting automatic feedback, and it can even assist with the correction process. This makes it easier to design high-quality exams, leading to greater time savings and increased objectivity when correcting the exams.

Preventing cheating

E-assessment platforms offer extensive mechanisms to prevent and detect cheating in exams. These include the randomisation of questions and answer options, adaptive testing, and integration with proctoring solutions and lockdown browsers. An exam platform also includes extensive logging of all actions and proactive warnings when potential problems occur, to guarantee that exams are taken under fair conditions.

Live supervision

During exams, invigilators can track candidates’ progress, offer support, and report incidents using the platform’s supervision module.

Scoring and giving feedback

Detailed scoring is possible in the e-assessment platform, based on criteria or rubrics. This increases objectivity and consistency in assessment and offers the candidates more possibilities for personalised feedback. In addition, the platform can support the assessor in various ways, for example with the semi-automatic scoring of open questions.

Layered reporting

The platform generates extensive reports that offer insight into individual and group achievements, including progress of knowledge levels over time.

Tools

An e-assessment platform usually supports various tools such as high-contrast mode, marker pen, special character entry, read aloud software, calculators and dictionaries, making exams accessible to a range of user profiles.

Item analysis

The item analysis module makes it possible to evaluate in detail how effectively questions measure learning goals, in order to improve the quality of the database of items.

Conclusion

Although both an LMS and an e-assessment platform add value to an educational ecosystem, they differ in their focus and features. An LMS is ideal for managing educational content and learning processes, whereas an e-assessment platform excels in the measurement of knowledge and skills by means of advanced testing features and reporting. Every organisation should consider its own needs and context when selecting the most suitable platform. If both systems are needed, it is best to consider the different possibilities for integration to be able to offer your users a flawless user experience.