Gwangju Office of Education Becomes First to Introduce Digital Public Education Assessment 'Whale UBT'

The Gwangju Office of Education has begun a full-scale transition to a new system in order to establish a fair and highly reliable digital assessment environment.

According to the Gwangju Office of Education on April 21, the office has integrated the online digital assessment system 'Whale UBT' into its own teaching and learning platform, 'Gwangju Aion', and recently conducted its first online training session for teachers at pilot schools. Gwangju is the first among regional offices of education nationwide to officially introduce Whale UBT.

An online training session utilizing Whale UBT in progress. Provided by Gwangju Office of Education.

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Whale UBT (Ubiquitous-Based Test) is a digital assessment platform developed by Naver. It is designed to integrate various public education assessments?including diagnostic, formative, and performance assessments?into a single system, all based on the achievement standards of elementary, middle, and high school curricula.

The Gwangju Office of Education has enabled teachers to handle all processes?including item creation, test paper distribution, grading, and result analysis?within a single environment by linking the existing learning platform 'Gwangju Aion' with Whale UBT. Notably, the system is equipped with approximately 400,000 items from four publishers: EBS, Chunjae Education, Jihaksa, and Solbook. Metadata has also been standardized in accordance with the 2015 and 2022 revised curricula.

The office has also introduced a dedicated browser with a mobile test mode feature, taking into account elementary schools that use Android-based tablets. In addition, an AI-based proctoring function has been implemented to prevent cheating by test-takers and to enable safer assessment administration.

Superintendent Lee Jungseon stated, "Whale UBT is a tool that reduces the assessment workload for teachers and provides students with accurate achievement feedback," adding, "We will continue to reflect the voices from the field to ensure that the Gwangju-style digital assessment system is successfully established in schools."

The Gwangju Office of Education plans to gradually expand the application of the Whale UBT system after conducting function checks and collecting feedback from teachers through the second half of the year.

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