5.1 Technology-enabled assessment
Technology-enabled assessment includes any use of a digital technology as part of any assessment-related activity. In an online environment, it can be used to align teaching and assessment methods.
Technology-enabled assessment potentially has many benefits. It can:
- open up new possibilities for the design of assignments;
- help make those assignments more authentic for learners;
- enable teachers to assess skills that could not be assessed in other ways;
- allow students to check their understanding without having to wait for individual attention from a teacher;
- provide opportunities for repeated practice;
- allow students to make mistakes in private;
- provide instant feedback;
- provide feedback that is perceived to be impersonal and non-judgmental.
On the downside, though, technology-enabled assessment can:
- become constraining;
- prompt educators to teach to tests that can be automatically marked and assessed;
- mislead learners with badly phrased questions or a selection of wrong answers;
- waste teachers’ time with a requirement to produce challenging questions, pitched at the right level, paired with a series of answers that are all equally plausible;
- prompt learners to game the system;
- enable learners to access previous answers;
- open up possibilities for plagiarised responses.