 Modern teaching and learning scenarios involve assessment in many ways, prior, during or after the learning process. In the following, I will outline the integration of assessment into the teaching and learning scenario used on the Virtual Linguistics Campus. In particular, we will discuss the various types of assessment. We will look at the special advantages of electronic assessment and see how assessment can be integrated into modern teaching and learning scenarios. And last but not least, we will look at the special case of formative assessment. Furthermore, we take a brief look at the historical development of assessment on the Virtual Linguistics Campus. Now, modern electronic assessment on the Virtual Linguistics Campus has a long tradition. It goes back to the 1990s when we dealt with intelligent and general tutoring principles first in our publications of that time and later in our linguistic CD-ROMs that were published around 1996. The experience we gain from the tutorial exercises of that time constitutes the basis for all electronic assessments used on the Virtual Linguistics Campus today. Let's now start with the various types of assessment. Now, depending on the integration into the learning process, we can identify several types of assessment today. Let us look at them and relate them to the learning process. Diagnostic assessment employs assessment procedures prior to the learning process in order to organize teaching and learning activities. So, we can put it over here prior to the learning process. Formative assessment refers to those assessment procedures employed during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities. So, this would be a position for formative assessment. Summative assessment summarizes the development of learners at a particular time. After a certain period of work, for example, after a unit or after a class, the learner sits for a test and then the teacher marks the test and normally assigns a score. So, summative assessment occurs after the learning process. Integrated assessment is a special form of self-testing that allows the learner to update and examine the knowledge acquired. We will see that this is an assessment type that necessitates specific digital e-teaching scenarios. So, it is a special form of testing that accompanies the learning process. With the exception of this last type, all assessment types can be administered electronically. But why should we do that? What are the benefits of electronic assessment? Well, if it were just a reduction of our workload, that is a reduction of our effort in correcting and grading, then I would strongly recommend not to use any sort of electronic assessment. However, with electronic assessment we can enhance traditional assessment scenarios. So, the most important arguments for electronic assessment are place and time independence, but even more importantly, the integration of multimedia and thus the option to use testing scenarios that were traditionally impossible. However, we should be careful. As far as the correction and evaluation of electronic assessments is concerned, the computer is currently inferior to humans. Hence, the post-editing of computerized tests beyond simple multiple choice, which has never had a big tradition in the arts and social sciences, is still necessary. But before we think about the conversion of traditional assessment to e-assessment, let us first list the various types of assessment in our discipline and see whether they can be realized electronically. In language studies and linguistics, we typically use the following variants of assessment in our curriculum. We have worksheets. Now, these are small tasks with a clearly defined topic. They may involve data analysis, simple questions that have to be answered, or gap-filling exercises to name just a few. And then there are presentations that constitute an important assessment type in the social sciences and arts where students have to present a particular topic or project in class. And we have exams, but exams are relatively rare, but they are used in our subject, especially on an introductory level. And if they are used, they are primarily essay exams. That is, they involve questions that have to be answered in an essay format. Last but not least, we use term papers. However, they have changed during the past few years. Instead of summarizing the state of the art in research, they involve typical research questions that have to be backed up by data analysis or corpus studies. This reduces the temptation of using copy and paste techniques more commonly known as plagiarism. Of these assessment types, only worksheets, simple data analysis and simplified final exams can be realized electronically and at the same time enhance the quality of assessment. Let us now look at the types of tests that can realize these assessments. Now, in this diagram, the electronic tests have been grouped along the scales restricted versus free answers, the vertical scale, and low versus high user integration on the horizontal axis. The simplest type of such electronic tests is, of course, the multiple-choice test, where you have either one or several choices. Such tests can be extended to what we call multiple-choice plus, where the choice influences the set of alternatives. This task represents the discovery of distinctive features in relationship to a set of phonemes. Drag and drop tasks are typical association tasks which are used to associate properties such as word classes or syntactic functions with linguistic elements. Selection and analysis tasks are used in linguistics, especially when words or sentences have to be analyzed into their component parts. Even though the possible answers are still restricted to some extent, the abstraction level on behalf of the user is much higher. The same applies to listening tasks, where you hear a sound, for example a consonant, and have to associate it with a certain location on a chart or on a map, or to pointing tasks, where particular positions on diagrams, maps, etc. have to be marked. Almost free answers are required in text input tasks, where questions have to be answered in a simple text format, and even more so if this is combined with a special symbolic system and audio in so-called transcription tasks. These electronic tests can now be combined in a modular fashion to various electronic assessment formats. For example, we have worksheets which normally consist of one task or one electronic test that can be done and submitted at any time from anywhere. Furthermore, we have electronic analysis projects which consist of one or several electronic tests, normally not more than two, and they involve a fixed submission deadline. And then we have electronic exams where we have four or even more electronic tests that are combined to form the exam, and that have to be done in our computer pool at a given time. One advantage of this modular system of combining simple assessments is that our students are used to our assessment formats and do not need any mock exams or test rounds before they come to write the final e-exams. How can we use these assessment types within a class? Well, that's the next point we have to solve. The on-campus classes offered via the Virtual Linguistics Campus are organized according to our inverted classroom mastery model. This model of teaching and learning presupposes that students must have worked through the online content in a self-guided phase before they join the subsequent in-class phase. Three types of assessment are typical for this model. We have unit integrated self-tests. They allow students to permanently check their own knowledge. On the Virtual Linguistics Campus, the respective electronic tests are presented by the interactive tutor of the virtual session. Formative assessment takes place after the self-guided content acquisition phase and before the in-class meeting. Thus, the results of the respective e-tests can be very influential for the subsequent teaching and learning process. Additional unit-related summative assessments may be used after phase one, the phase of content delivery and content acquisition, or even after phase two, after the in-class phase, and then they can be used for grading. By the way, just like in traditional teaching and learning scenarios, assessment may be integrated class initially, in which case we could use a diagnostic test with formative character, or class finally where in some classes we will write a final electronic exam, that is a graded summative assessment. The most important difference between traditional scenarios and scenarios that invert the central phases of teaching and learning concerns the role of formative assessment, so let's look at it in more detail. With formative assessments, students can demonstrate mastery. If they do, they can be believed to be well prepared for the subsequent in-class phase. If they can't demonstrate mastery in such an assessment, well then they have several options. They can repeat the assessment until they pass it. They can go back to the phase of content delivery as often as they like and then do the test again. Or they simply attend the subsequent in-class meeting without having demonstrated mastery. For some students, well, this may even be a standard option. They do not want to show mastery via additional assessment at all and in an even worse case, they attend the in-class meeting totally unprepared. However, in such cases, students will quickly realize that without preparation it doesn't make sense to join their fellow students in class. What about the results of the formative assessment? Well, in the subsequent in-class phase, the results of the formative assessment can be used very efficiently. Since the in-class phase is now no longer used for content delivery, we can react towards the results of formative assessments and modify our teaching strategies. If the majority of our students had trouble with the worksheet, that is, with the formative assessment, we can assume that they have not mastered the content, thus we will have to re-teach. If all students or the majority of our students pass the worksheet, we can assume a high degree of mastery and the focus will be on practicing. Well, and if it's somewhere in the middle, we will do both. So in the inverted classroom mastery model, we have formative assessments in the true sense. Their results shape the organization of the in-class phase. Here is a fragment of a class-related spreadsheet to which the VLC class instructor has access via mouse click. It exhibits the situation after two formative assessments and shows that almost all students have shown mastery. Only student number 58 either had trouble or didn't care. But we can sort this out in class and take care of Paul and all those students who for whatever reason could not demonstrate mastery. So what about the future? As Alison King predicted in 1993, we believe that there is no way back to traditional teaching and learning scenarios where a god-like sage on stage delivers the content. Rather, content delivery and content acquisition will be done online. In our case, we provide our students with our e-learning units which consist of a multimedia component, the so-called virtual session, an e-lecture which they can access independently on YouTube or linked up with a virtual session and with additional print material contained in our workbooks. Permanent formative assessment will play a fundamental role in such a scenario. Currently, the VLC tests can only be passed or failed and the number of failures will not be counted. So we do not demonize failure. However, in order to motivate students to invest even more effort into studying and learning, we will implement award and high score systems and, of course, we will work on more advanced test formats. Well, I hope to have shown that electronic assessment not only offers a number of new options for testing, but also has to be defined from a subject-specific perspective. Various assessment types that are used in linguistics do not play a role in other subjects. Some of them, however, can be transferred relatively easily. Furthermore, I hope that I could point out that formative and integrated assessments are by far the most important options, especially if you use a teaching and learning scenario that is dominated by digital content delivery and online content acquisition. In such a scenario, permanent formative assessment is of utmost importance for the demonstration of mastery and this dominance explains our figures. Per term, we have roughly 700 cases of summative E-assessment, the so-called electronic exams, but we have about 10,000 cases of formative assessment. In addition to this, we have a few hundred cases of diagnostic assessment, especially in one class where we check the introductory level of our students. Well, with these formative assessments, these 10,000 cases, this is where not only quality enhancement comes in, but also the human effort. Imagine we had to correct all those 10,000 cases. Electronic formative assessment not only supports teaching and learning, but also frees us from correction work and gives us more time to be at your service and constantly work on the improvement of our teaching and learning approach. We like that very much and I hope you like it too. Thank you very much.