Proper assessment of student progress is, by all means, one of the major components of quality education regardless of the age of subject specifics. Thus, to secure proper progress evaluations, teachers tend to use various means of data objectivity enhancement. One such means is the introduction of technology to the process. Before the definition of technology’s appropriateness, it is necessary to distinguish between two major types of assessment: formative and summative (Harlan & Rivkin, 2012). While the former stands for providing learners with small tasks to identify the current progress patterns, the latter is aimed at demonstrating the progress made over a longer learning period (Alqurashi & Siegelman, 2019). Thus, the technology-based assessment is relevant in both cases, but the specifics of its usage would differ according to the purpose.
To begin with, it is necessary to understand how technology may be successfully introduced to the assessment patterns. A prime example of such integration is the adoption of Peuntedura’s SAMR (substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition) model that seeks how conventional activities are reconsidered through the prism of technology (Alqurashi & Siegelman, 2019). Hence, when speaking of young learners’ assessment, teachers may replace the easiest activities such as calculation with web-based games or multimedia presentations to make learners more adjusted to the technological aspect of modern human life.
However, this endeavor may also have some limitations when it comes to young learners. According to researchers, the learning process generally consists of three dimensions: internal, psychological, social, and cultural, and disciplinary or content dimension (Molnár & Csapó, 2019). Thus, smaller learners feel a greater need for moderation internal and social interactions during the assessment, whereas the technology-based aspects cover the content primarily. Moreover, children are extremely diverse in their understanding and access to technology due to their different backgrounds (Seefeldt et al., 2014). Thus, to promote classroom inclusion, teachers are to make sure that technology integration in the assessment is held on the classroom premises to secure equality (Cornelius, 2014). In such a way, technology-associated limitations could be resolved promptly.
One of the major issues related to today’s assessment patterns is the gap between the teachers’ expectations from the process and learners’ perception of the material. For this reason, pre-assessment was defined as a way to close this gap by helping students realize what notions they should have learned within the process (Guskey & McTighe, 2016). However, besides promoting pre-assessment, teachers are to make sure that students’ desires coincide with the curriculum. Otherwise, even the most comprehensive assessment will not be perceived adequately by learners once they understand that their expectations are not considered during the lesson planning.
Since pre-assessment is highly correlated with the process of goal articulation, it would be useful to make learners involved in the process of these goals’ identification (Hockett & Doubet, 2014). In such a way, when learning, students would feel more responsible because they realize that they decided to emphasize this information in the first place. Another method of assessment engagement would be to provide students with the responsibility of revising the material by giving them topics for the presentation of creative projects related to the learning goals (Gupta, 2016; McCourt & Kelley, 2016). As a result, learners experience independence and maturity that comes with responsibility for quality assessment outcomes in the future.
References
Alqurashi, E., & Siegelman, A. R. (2019). Designing and evaluating technology-based formative assessments. In Handbook of research on faculty development or digital teaching and learning (pp. 222-244). IGI Global.
Cornelius, K. E. (2014). Formative assessment made easy: Templates for collecting daily data in inclusive classrooms. Teaching Exceptional Children, 47(2), 112-118.
Gupta, K. (2016). Assessment and learning. The Science Teacher, 43-47.
Guskey, T. R., & McTighe, J. (2016). Pre-assessment: Promises and cautions. Educational Leadership, 38-43.
Harlan, J. D., & Rivkin, M. S. (2012). Science experiences for the early childhood years: An integrated affective approach (10th ed.). Pearson.
Hockett, J. A., & Doubet, K. J. (2014). Turning on the lights: What pre-assessments can do. Educational Leadership, 50-54.
McCourt, S., & Kelley, S. S. (2016). Assessing the unseen: Using music and literature to access and develop first graders’ knowledge of sound waves. Science and Children, 55-59.
Molnár, G., & Csapó, B. (2019). Technology-based diagnostic assessments or identifying early mathematical learning differences. In International handbook of mathematical learning differences (pp. 683-707). Springer.
Seefeldt, C., Castle, S., & Falconer, R. C. (2014). Social studies for the preschool/primary child (9th ed.). Pearson.