William Cope
May Thet Khine Nyein
Obie Ellmoos.png "Nathan Luise")
Nathan Luise
Olive SabiitiAssessment for Learning MOOC’s Updates
New Opportunities for Assessment in the Digital Age (Admin Update 4)
Here are two papers exploring the impact of new technologies on assessment:
- Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. 2015. "Assessment and Pedagogy in the Era of Machine-Mediated Learning." Pp. 350-74 in Education as Social Construction: Contributions to Theory, Research, and Practice, edited by T. Dragonas, K. J. Gergen, S. McNamee and E. Tseliou. Chagrin Falls OH: Worldshare Books.
Cope_20_26_20Kalantzis_20Learning_20and_20Assessment_202015.pdf
- Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. 2016. "Big Data Comes to School: Implications for Learning, Assessment and Research." AERA Open 2(2):1-19.
Comment: What are the potentials for new forms of assessment in the digital age? What are the dangers?
Make an Update: Find an example of an innovative, computer-mediated assessment. Describe and analyze it.
New forms of assessment in the digital age have strong potential to make learning more personalized, authentic, and continuous. Digital platforms allow assessments that measure skills in real time—such as coding projects, simulations, games, e-portfolios, and interactive tasks—rather than relying only on paper tests. They can give instant feedback, support competency-based learning, and help teachers understand how students learn through data analytics. These tools can also include multimodal evidence (audio, video, design work) and make assessment more inclusive for different learners.
However, there are dangers. Heavy reliance on digital assessment can create privacy and data security risks, especially when student information is stored by private platforms. It can also lead to over-surveillance, where every click is monitored without clear educational purpose. Unequal access to devices and stable internet may widen learning gaps, giving some students advantage over others. Finally, digital data can be misinterpreted—high activity does not always mean deep learning—and algorithms can introduce hidden bias. The promise of digital assessment must be balanced with careful policies, equity, and strong teacher judgment.
The digital age has transformed education, offering innovative tools and platforms that have the potential to reshape how we assess student learning. New forms of assessment—such as computer-based testing, online portfolios, adaptive learning platforms, and embedded learning analytics—offer exciting possibilities for more personalized, timely, and meaningful evaluation. However, alongside these opportunities come significant dangers, particularly in the context of Assessment of Student Achievement and Evaluation (ASAE), where accurate and fair measurement of learning is crucial.
Potentials of New Forms of Assessment
One of the greatest potentials of digital assessments is personalization. Adaptive assessments can adjust the difficulty of questions in real time based on a student’s responses, providing a tailored learning and testing experience. This allows educators to identify individual strengths and weaknesses more accurately and to offer targeted support.
Digital assessments also enable immediate feedback, which enhances the learning process. Students can see the results of their work instantly, reflect on mistakes, and adjust their strategies without waiting for traditional grading cycles. This fosters a more continuous and formative approach to learning.
Another advantage is data-driven insights. Online platforms and learning analytics collect detailed information about how students interact with content, such as time spent on tasks, patterns of errors, and engagement levels. These insights can help teachers make informed instructional decisions and monitor learning progress at both individual and class levels.
Digital assessments can also promote creativity and higher-order thinking. Tools such as simulations, virtual labs, and interactive projects allow students to demonstrate skills beyond rote memorization, including problem-solving, collaboration, and critical thinking—competencies that traditional paper-and-pencil tests often fail to capture.
Finally, digital assessments offer accessibility and scalability. Students from different locations can participate in assessments simultaneously, making it easier to reach remote learners. Features like text-to-speech, adjustable fonts, or alternative input methods can also make assessments more inclusive for learners with disabilities.
Digital Assessments: Opportunities and Risks
New forms of assessment in the digital age have many exciting possibilities, but they also come with some dangers. Digital assessments can give quick feedback, adjust to a student’s level, and include videos, games, and interactive tools that make learning more engaging. They can also collect detailed information about how students think, not just whether they get the answer right. These tools can help teachers understand strengths and weaknesses more clearly. However, there are also dangers. Some digital assessments may collect too much personal data, which could affect student privacy. Others may be unfair to students who do not have access to good technology or fast internet. There is also a risk that computers might make mistakes in scoring or that schools might rely too much on data instead of real human judgment. For the update, an example of an innovative, computer-mediated assessment is adaptive testing, such as the tests used in MAP Growth. In adaptive testing, the computer changes the difficulty of each question based on how the student answered the previous one. If the student gets a question right, the next one becomes harder; if they miss one, the next becomes easier. This creates a more personal and accurate test for each learner. The strength of adaptive testing is that it gives a clearer picture of what a student truly knows and avoids questions that are too easy or too hard. It can also make the test shorter because the computer quickly finds the student’s skill level. However, its weaknesses include reliance on technology, which can create problems if the system fails or if students are uncomfortable with computers. It may also hide how the test works, making the process feel less transparent. Even with these risks, adaptive digital assessments show how technology can make testing more flexible, personalized, and helpful when used responsibly.
Digital tools open the door to assessment that feels more like real life and less like a one‑off test. Learners can show what they know through simulations, multimedia projects, and ongoing work in online spaces, rather than just timed exams or recall quizzes. Technology also makes it easier to give frequent, low‑stakes checks for understanding and fast, tailored feedback, which can help students course‑correct as they go instead of finding out too late that they were off track. For many, online and remote options can also make assessment more flexible and convenient, especially when they cannot be in a physical classroom.
At the same time, these tools introduce serious concerns that go beyond simple “cheating.” Students may raise big questions about privacy, consent, and how long student data is kept or used. Unequal access to devices, stable internet, and quiet space means digital assessment can deepen existing inequities if those conditions are not addressed. And with generative AI now widely available, traditional essays and take‑home assignments are easier to outsource, while automated scoring and detection systems can be biased or opaque, shifting assessment toward what machines can easily judge rather than the richer learning outcomes educators may actually value.
The digital age offers transformative potentials for educational assessment, enabling systems to become adaptive and personalized for precise measurement and allowing the evaluation of complex, real-world skills through simulations and virtual environments (TEAs). Furthermore, technology provides instant, rich feedback and leverages Learning Analytics to diagnose specific knowledge gaps, offering unprecedented opportunities for tailored, formative intervention. However, these advancements introduce significant dangers, including the amplification of the digital divide and inequity among students with varied access to hardware and internet, serious risks to data privacy and security concerning highly sensitive student information, challenges to academic integrity due to sophisticated online cheating methods (including generative AI), and the potential for algorithmic bias to perpetuate and automate unfair evaluations.
The shifting of traditional assessment into computer-mediated-assessment was brought by the digital age. The digitization of assessment does not only mean of assessments that uses the technology but it is about the fundamentally change on what or how to measure human potential. These new forms of assessment offers opportunities in personalization and in depth but it has also introduce risk regarding privacy. Another one is that the assessment in the digital realm brings significant ethical and practical problems that threaten to widen educational gaps.
The potential computer-mediated assessment is transformative, it can make learning visible, personalized and deeply interactive. However, if we always use and prioritized this we may be creating a system that is technically advanced but educationally impoverished.
I agree.
One good example of an innovative, computer-mediated assessment is Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT), where a computer dynamically adjusts which questions you receive based on how you answer previous ones — getting one right prompts a harder question, getting one wrong gives an easier one. This makes the test more efficient and more precisely tailored to a test-taker’s ability level: CAT often needs far fewer items than a standard fixed-test to estimate ability with similar accuracy. On the downside, CAT requires a large, carefully calibrated pool of questions, solid tech infrastructure, and complex psychometric design — which can make it costly to implement and less feasible for small-scale or resource-limited settings.
Myers, S. (2021). Computer-Adapted Testing. EBSCO Research Starters.
New forms of assessment in the digital age hold great potential to enhance learning by providing personalized, real-time feedback and adapting to individual learner needs. Digital tools can assess complex skills, such as collaboration and creativity, through interactive tasks and simulations, making assessments more authentic and engaging. Additionally, they enable broader accessibility and flexible testing environments beyond traditional classrooms.
However, these advances come with dangers, including concerns about data privacy and security, possible biases in automated scoring or algorithms, and increased reliance on technology that may overlook important social and emotional aspects of learning. There is also a risk of widening educational inequities due to uneven access to reliable technology. Careful design, ethical considerations, and ensuring equitable access are essential to harness the benefits while minimizing the risks of digital assessments.
New forms of assessment in the digital age hold great potential to enhance learning by providing personalized, real-time feedback and adapting to individual learner needs. Digital tools can assess complex skills, such as collaboration and creativity, through interactive tasks and simulations, making assessments more authentic and engaging. Additionally, they enable broader accessibility and flexible testing environments beyond traditional classrooms.
However, these advances come with dangers, including concerns about data privacy and security, possible biases in automated scoring or algorithms, and increased reliance on technology that may overlook important social and emotional aspects of learning. There is also a risk of widening educational inequities due to uneven access to reliable technology. Careful design, ethical considerations, and ensuring equitable access are essential to harness the benefits while minimizing the risks of digital assessments.
Assessment in the digital age offers more personalized and interactive ways to evaluate learning; however, there are rising concerns about data privacy, equity, accuracy, and over-reliance on automation. There have been many computer-mediated assessment tools used in learning, such as Google Forms, Edmodo, Wayground (formerly Quizizz), Kahoot, and more. This assessment can be personalized depending on the teacher's preference; you can choose different test types and once it's implemented for students, the teacher can easily see the results of their assessment. While it offers a very interactive kind of assessment, there are also risks, such as equity and access, data privacy, and over-automation. That is why when it is used, it must be strictly monitored and checked.
Yes, this is true.