The introduction of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) effects much more than the skills and content taught in the classroom. It has changed the way in which we assess students in regards to those skills and content. Technology has enhanced and benefited the world of educational assessment in many ways. ICT’s provide teachers with more data than traditional assessments. The data can be easily manipulated in various ways to provide more accurate conclusions. "Technology offers educators a way to individualize curriculum and customize it to the needs of the individual students so all children can achieve their potential." [App]

According to an article by W. Ross Brewer and Bena Kallick in the 1996 Edition of the Yearbook (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) Technology "offers a natural fit" with the assessment and reporting needs of schools [BK]:

1. "Technology can make information available anytime, anywhere. Computers and telephone lines are accessible twenty-four hours a day so users are not limited by school hours or location."
2. "Because computers can collect and store vast amounts of information—as well as process and retrieve it quickly and accurately—they put users in charge of the information they want to review"
3. "We value what we assess, but we can only assess what we can see or hear. Technology will make student achievement more visible. ... Technology makes it possible to record and retain virtually all performances and to make them available to all who are interested."
4. "Technology also makes it possible to use time as a different dimension of assessment. Today, we summarize students' achievement at year's end by reporting whether each student has passed the threshold for the current year—1 of 13 thresholds to be crossed on the journey to graduation. Technology allows us to review earlier performances any time—weeks, months, or years earlier." [BK]

ICTs offer more opportunities for assessment. Technology provides educators with products such as the Classroom Performance System (CPS) by Pearson NCS. This “hand-held interactive response system” allows students to respond immediately to classroom activities through a sensor that records every student’s response. Teachers have the benefit of immediate feedback from the class. He or she can immediately see whether students have grasped a concept or met a specific learning standard. Since students do not have to raise their hands and speak up to respond, they are more likely to answer questions honestly and to the best of their abilities. [CPS]

The Internet allows student assessment to travel beyond the boundaries of time and location. Students can go online from anywhere, at anytime, and have access to evaluations. These assessments and activities can assess their learning and application of skills and content. They can complete educational activities online that evaluate their current skill levels as well as allowing them to practice and improve those skills. Many of these activities are presented in the form of games that students of various ages find to be very fun and entertaining.

Through the computer, the activity items are randomized which allows for "innumerable" variations for the same activity. [Mou] Many of these activities have summary/scoring pages that display a student's "grade" for the activity. These grades can help parents and teachers keep track of how well their student is doing. Parents can easily know what and how their children are doing by accessing an online grade book on their school's web site.

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Individualized Assessment

There are many programs available that are geared specifically to assessing a student's skills and levels of achievement. The STAR Reading [STAR] program allows students to take a test on the computer. The test consists of a series of multiple-choice questions taken randomly from a question bank. The computer brings up a specific number of questions for that student to answer. The student is instructed to choose the best answer to the given question. Once that question has been answered, the student is then taken on to the next question. They can complete the assessment at their own pace, completing as many questions as they can within the allotted time. By seeing only one question as a time, students are not overwhelmed with the entire assessment at once. Once the student has completed the assessment, the teacher can go in and generate a report of that student's assessment. The report includes the child's individual reading level, a narrative of the child's reading abilities, and goals and strategies to improve any "problem" areas that have been identified in the assessment.

In the same way, Accelerated Reading [AR] allows students to take quizzes on books that they have read. The books are categorized by their reading level, and students have the opportunity to take quizzes on the books that fall into their own personal reading level--as determined by the STAR testing results. The students log in to their account, choose the book that they wish to take a test on and then answer the questions taken randomly from a question bank. Once completed, a report will identify how well the student has comprehended and remembered the material from the book. By reading books at THEIR OWN LEVEL, the student's options are individualized to meet their own academic needs.

Such opportunities are not limited to reading skills. Similar assessment programs have been developed for other content areas of education. These programs assist teachers in providing students with individualized curriculum based on each student's needs. Many of them can easily be incorporated into the teacher's existing plans.

These programs provide the individualization elements that are often difficult to "plan" for students. As mentioned in our Content section, “Students can find materials at levels appropriate for all learners in the classroom, essentially differentiating the curriculum to each learner’s appropriate zone of proximal development.” [Content] Students are able to work on the skills in their "problem areas" at their own pace with the teacher available to facilitate their learning by answering questions and discussing the concepts with the students. Students can assess their own progress by using programs with built-in features such as Spell/Grammar-Check and calculators. These features allow students to monitor their own work and guide them in finding and solving problems in their projects.

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Learning Standards Assessment

In today's world, accountability is the name of the game. Schools and educators are being asked to be "accountable" for their students' education. In other words, they are being asked to prove to the community and the government that their students are really learning what they are supposed to be learning. In order to assess this accountability, many states have developed state achievement tests based on their educational standards. These tests are given to students across the states each year. The results are published in school report cards and are often used to help the government leaders determine how much funding each school needs or deserves. [Content] As the world is changing and developing, the standards by which students are assessed are also changing. As mentioned in the Skills and Content sections of this essay, higher-order skills such as problem solving, analysis, interpretation, and application are not very important elements of the curriculum. [Skills and Content] In the past, these skills were not discussed and practiced in-depth until students entered the upper grade levels. The new standards require that young elementary students be well on their way to achieving these higher-order skills.

The onset of technology in education has brought additional standards with it. The National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) are a set of standards developed for schools nation-wide by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). ISTE has developed standards for students to allow and guide them to become technology-literate, successful adults in this technology-enhanced world. The teacher and administrator versions of the NETS prepare teachers and administrators for guiding students to meet and exceed these standards. [NETS]

The development of the Learning Standards, the Technology standards, and the concept of school accountability has presented teachers with more challenges than ever before. Before these concepts came around, teachers were faced with many challenges to guide and prepare their students for a successful life. The new concepts have added additional responsibilities to teachers’ already-full plates. Now, teachers must not only teach their students the basic academic disciplines, but their curriculum must be aligned to state and technology learning standards. They must include higher-order skills such as analysis and interpretation to students of all ages and abilities. These additional responsibilities require more and more of teachers’ already small amounts of available time and energy.

Teachers are in a great need for anything that will help them to prepare effective, high-quality lessons to meet these new responsibilities. They are constantly looking for new and effective ways in which to educate their students and to prepare them for meeting the standards and finding success in the “real-world”. Technology offers many opportunities for teachers who are trying to develop real-world related lessons that are based on the standards. It offers many ways to prepare students for upcoming assessments. Many states have made their standards available online. They often have the standards organized with descriptors, benchmarks, and suggested activities and resources included. This provides easy-access to teachers who often have a very limited amount of time to prepare for lessons.

Many state and normed assessments now offer students the opportunity to practice taking assessments on their web sites. Students visit the test's web site and have the opportunity to answer questions based on that test's assessment and learning standards. The sites contain very large banks of possible questions based on those found on the actual assessment. In fact, many of the questions come from previous versions of the tests. The computer might randomly choose questions for the students to answer. Or, the webmaster might already have a test question layout set up. Once finished, the student will receive a summary of their results. The summary can give students and teachers a preview of the type of scores the students will earn on the assessments, as well as indicating what areas the student needs to practice and what skills need to be improved before taking the assessment.

For instance, the Illinois Standards Achievement Test [ISAT] offers interactive sample tests to assist students in preparing for the ISAT. You can visit the Illinois Assessment Sample Items [ISBEs] web site to take a sample interactive version of the test. Alternatively, you can download the State Assessment Sample Items Pool [ISBEp] to build your own sample tests.

Since the computer does the bulk of the work in the assessment process, schools/teachers/students will receive the results more quickly and those results are theoretically more accurate than the results of more traditional assessments. The results can be easily correlated with other student information (from other assessments, etc.) as well as matched up to district and/or state goals. The results can be categorized and graphed to find individual, classroom, and school strengths and weaknesses. This equips school districts with the information necessary to set up programs to improve the test scores by focusing on the weak areas.

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Alternate Assessment

The world of education has changed in many ways with the onset of technology. Education is shifting more and more towards student-centered classrooms. Traditionally, the purpose of education has consisted of providing students with knowledge and skills. As mentioned in previous sections, the new purpose of education focuses on “the desire to teach students how to learn, how to problem-solve, how to create expectations for their own learning and evaluate the progress toward those goals.” [Content] The new theories consist more of showing students how to find answers than simply teaching them the answers. Students are taught how to analyze the material to gain a deeper understanding of the facts and their relationships to other concepts.

These changes have opened the eyes of educators to show them that new concepts need new methods of assessment. These new concepts cannot be tested accurately with traditional assessment methods such as tests with true/false, short answer, and multiple-choice questions. "Assessment methods and instruments should be appropriate to the learning outcomes.” [Culp] If you change the strategies, methods, or object of assessment (i.e. skills or content) but not the assessment, then the assessments will not accurately report student learning.

Technology is becoming infused into educational curriculum more deeply than ever before. "Researchers have realized that technology cannot be treated as a single independent variable, and that student achievement is gauged not only by how well students perform on standardized tests but also by students' ability to use higher-order thinking skills (such as thinking critically, analyzing, making inferences, and solving problems). Judging the impact of any particular technology requires an understanding of how it is used in the classroom and what learning goals are held by the educators involved, knowledge about the type of assessments that are used to evaluate improvements in student achievement, and an awareness of the complex nature of change in the school environment.” [Culp]

One of the newest trends of assessment is authentic assessments. “Authentic assessment is any type of assessment that requires students to demonstrate skills and competencies that realistically represent problems and situations likely to be encouraged in daily life.” [NCREL] In other words, authentic assessment is assessing the processes students use to solve real-world problems instead of simply assessing retained knowledge and skill abilities. Educators have realized that the basic skills are not necessarily important. How students are able to utilize the basic skills and apply them to real-world situations is much more important than the skills themselves. [Skills]

Traditional methods of assessment often focused on basic skills. “Although basic skills may be important goals of educations, they are often over-emphasized in an effort to raise standardized test scores.” [Bond] On the other hand, authentic assessment allows teachers to focus on how students are able to apply these basic skills to real-life situations. Teachers observe students in real-world situations to determine whether students have the skills necessary and are able to apply them effectively to solve the given problem. “To be able to assess students for the skills that the 21st century will require means watching them as they focus on problems, gather information, identify key variables, develop a research question, etc.” [SMS] Two of the major tools of authentic assessment are rubrics and portfolios.

Rubrics
One tools of authentic assessment is the rubric. According to the Online Merriam-Webster dictionary, a rubric is "an authoritative rule" or "an established rule, tradition, or custom" [MeWe]. When applied to education, this becomes a set of pre-established guidelines for a given task. In a typical rubric, the teacher will break the assignment down into individual elements.

The individual elements are categorized by their level of difficulty and their importance to the standards. Each element is assigned to a category based on its alignment to the standards. The minimum pieces that are required will be placed in the "warning" category. As you travel higher up the rubric, through the "below standard,” "meets standard,” and "exceeds standard" levels, more pieces are required. All possible requirements are listed in the "exceeds standard" category. Tasks that meet these requirements have shown that the students have exceeded the corresponding learning standards.

When teachers provide their students with a copy of the rubric with the initial assignment information, the student can build his or her assignment based on the rubric. Going into the assignment, they will know exactly what is expected of them and what they have to do to earn the grade they wish to receive. Each student has a choice as to how much he or she wants to complete and what grade he or she will earn. Rubrics are set up to specifically connect an activity to the learning standards and the application of those standards. The student is graded on their application of the knowledge as opposed to the knowledge itself, based on specific standards. The teacher can quickly pinpoint the standards that have been met and those which a student should continue improving.

Portfolios
Another tool of authentic assessment is the portfolio. Portfolios are no longer simply a display or collection of work accomplished. They are much, much more. When combining the traditional portfolios with rubrics, portfolios are transformed into an assessment of a student's educational growth over time. Students collect their classwork throughout the year. Some assignments may be specific additions requested by the teacher, while others are based on each student's choice.

When the included activities are categorized and based on specific skills and content and organized into chronological order, they create a vivid picture of how much a student's knowledge and skills have developed throughout the year. By using checklists or rubrics based upon educational standards (or Individualized Education Program (IEP) goals and objectives), the teacher can then assess the activities to determine whether the student has reached the goals set for him or her. "When used with standards related to graduation, performances (recorded in portfolios) can be seen as milestones toward achieving those goals.” [BK]

By nature, technology-rich activities incorporate more higher-order skills, such as application and analysis, which are often difficult to assess using traditional forms of assessment. Alternatives, such as portfolios and rubrics, provide a more accurate assessment of these activities. The assessments are also enhanced through the use of technology. Basic word processing or spreadsheet programs can be used to create and maintain records of the rubrics and portfolios. Student activities can be compiled and linked to a central location for easy access. For instance, students can create a presentation or document with hyperlinks to their various activities. These activities can include things like writing samples, science lab write-ups, music, and video clips of dance performances or sporting events. [Mou] A viewer can easily click through the presentation/document to view the assignments.

Digital compilations such as electronic portfolios save space, are more mobile, and last longer than hardcopy portfolios. Digital files, even when they take up several megabytes, are exponentially smaller than several file folders of papers and projects. When a student graduates, or moves to a different district, the portfolio and accompanying files can easily be saved to a disk and sent with the student. Furthermore, even when programs for reading the portfolios become outdated, there are often plug-ins that will allow the newer programs to read the older files and/or transfer them into new formats.

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Grading and Reporting

Traditionally, students turn in their homework, the teacher grades the work then records the grade in the grade book. When the end of a grading period approached, the teacher would spend at least a couple of hours averaging all of each student's grades. They would have to record each grade on the students' individual report cards to be sent home to parents. This approach usually consists of adding up all earned points and/or averaging percentage grades. Each time a new grade was added, the teacher would have to re-calculate the student's grade. This process takes a large amount of time and energy to carry out. When a student or parent wanted an update on their grades, it would take the teacher several minutes to calculate the current grade average.

Today, with the implementation of computers in the classroom, teachers can have their student's grade averages at their fingertips. Teachers can easily and quickly set up spreadsheets to record and average students' grades. Many times, teachers can even find templates, on the web or in software packages, to assist them in setting up the spreadsheets. Once the grade spreadsheets are set up and implemented, the teacher simply plugs each grade into the allocated cell on the spreadsheet. Whenever a student or parent requests an update on their grade average, the teacher simply opens the spreadsheet and views the student's average that is automatically re-calculated every time a grade is added. If a grading error was found, the teacher simply inserts the new grade and the change is made automatically to the average. A teacher with a knowledge of building and password-protecting web pages, could upload these grades to their web pages so that students and parents can access them anytime from anywhere.

The complications of grading are reduced even greater by the implementation of electronic grade books. These grade books are specific computer programs that are developed to carry out many classroom management procedures for teachers. "Over the years, electronic gradebook software has grown in sophistication and versatility." [Mou] Many of these programs do more than just keeping track of grades. They have additional features that monitor absenteeism and tardiness. They have built in seating chart and lesson planning features. According to Janet Barnhart, co-author of this paper, some electronic grade books will even allow teachers to weigh assignments and create graphs to chart student progress. She says that with the program, she can monitor strengths and weaknesses of individual students and average class grades of particular assignments. [Bar] Furthermore...with a simple series of clicks, teachers can send their grades to the office in preparation for report cards. Since many of the traditional management tasks are done automatically by the program, teachers have more time to set up and carry out interactive lessons with their students. Teachers have more time to devote to their students' learning.

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