Learning-oriented and technology-enhanced assessment

My post on ‘Adjectives of assessment’ omitted ‘learning-oriented’, and to be honest it wasn’t until reading this afternoon that I realised what a  powerful concept learning-oriented assessment might be.  I was reading Keppell, M. and Carless, D. (2006) Learning-oriented assessment: a technology-based case study, Assessment in Education, 13(2), 179-191. Keppell and Carless deliberately use the term ‘learning-oriented’ instead of the more common ‘formative’ or ‘assessment for learning’ and they make the point that both formative and summative assessment can be learning-oriented (and I’d add that both formative and summative assessment can be anti-learning-oriented too). It is also noteworthy that Keppell and Carless’s work was done in Hong Kong, where assessment is generally characterised as being exam oriented.

I’d also overlooked the full impact of the phrase technology-enhanced assessment. That little world ‘enhanced’ presumably means that the assessment is better because of the use of technology. So if the technology doesn’t make it better, perhaps we shouldn’t be using it. Nice.

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