Technology-Mediated Writing Assessments: Principles and Processes

Abstract

This paper explores developments in technology-mediated writing environments that may support new forms of formative assessment and the closer relation of formative to summative assessment. Not only might these provide more learner-responsive and effective assessment of writing, but they may also support the assessment of disciplinary knowledge embedded in written and multimodal texts. After an overview of current debates on contemporary assessment practice, the paper goes on to develop six principles for effective assessment of writing. On this basis, the paper identifies potentially promising aspects of emerging processes of technology-mediated writing assessment.

Screen-based literacy practices in Swedish primary schools

“…Jewitt et al (2009) show that images and sounds became increasingly important in the educational context in Great Britain during the first decade of the 21st century, but teachers and pupils' use of multimodal resources reshaped that what was being learned. Several studies emphasise the tension between the need to use alternative modes of expression and the lack of educational design in digital environments (Cope, Kalantzis, McCarthey, Vojak & Kline, 2011;Luckin et al, 2009). …”

“…Several studies report that government and school policies are often in conflict with technological and social change, focusing too narrowly on conventional reading and writing measures, grammar and language (e.g. Jewitt, 2008;Merchant, 2008;Warschauer & Ware, 2008;Jewitt, Bezemer, Jones & Kress, 2009;Luckin, Clark, Graber, Logan, Mee, & Oliver, 2009;Cope, Kalantzis, McCarthey, Vojak & Kline, 2011). Ultimately, curriculum targets for language education also separate literacy from technology, privileging print-based forms of instruction and regarding technology as something that might help promote acquisition of literacy.…”

Learner differences in theory and practice†

“…Recursive feedback or formative assessment (Black & Wiliam, 1998;Wiliam, 2011) provides responses to learners that are always calibrated to the specifics of who they are, and the knowledge they are representing in their learning. In the era of inexpensive and accessible social knowledge technologies, no learning environment should be without always-available feedback mechanisms -machine feedback and machine-mediated social feedback (Cope & Kalantzis, 2013;Cope, Kalantzis, McCarthey, Vojak, & Kline, 2011).…”

Towards a New Learning: The Scholar Social Knowledge Workspace, in Theory and Practice

“…In recent decades, the obsession with testing for the purposes of institutional accountability has magnified everything strange and problematic about the heritage processes of testing. Social knowledge technologies, however, mean that assessment does not have to be this way any more (Cope et al, 2011b). One of our aims in the Scholar project has been to focus on formative assessmentassessment that is on-the-fly, and that makes in a detailed and constructive way a direct contribution to student learning.…”