Nine hundred students in the north of England are about to take part in a project to use mobile phones to learn and be assessed on their coursework.

The Assessment and Learning in Practice Settings (ALPS), a collaborative programme between five higher education institutions, is running the first major project to use mobile technology to improve higher education assessment techniques and student skills.

The 900 health and social care students will be given T-Mobile MDA Varios for mobile learning and assessments during work placements.

Tutors will be able to upload assessments to the mobile device for students to fill in while they are taking part in work placements.

Each assessment can be customised to individuals, so that that they are relevant to courses and learning styles.

Using T-Mobile’s Web’n’walk service, students can also use the mobile to access learning resources from a central virtual learning repository and can reflect on their work experience on a blog built into the assessment programme.

Assessors will use the system to log in to a secure area, connected to the university’s virtual learning environment teaching and business systems, to record and store the student’s assessment.

Trudie Roberts, ALPS director, says the project will bring benefits to students and assessors as it is rolled out to all of the 9,000 students over the next three years.