Category: Technology
Summary:
Cope, Malantizis, McCarthey, Vojak, & Kline sought to explore the possibilities and limitations of writing assessment technologies. They presented both sides of the debate on the use of such technologies including arguments that such programs remove the possibility of giving credit for the art of writing, prose, and storytelling, or that such programs cannot assess the correct things (thought and insight). They argue throughout the paper that such claims are minimal and the tools/technology are progressing to the point where they may be able to produce formative and summative assessment in real-time, providing feedback in future writing programs (or online, or elsewhere) as the learner writes removing the need for end-of-production assessment. Their vision of the merging of these processes would completely alter how instructors approach learning and grading; computers would become tutors and assistants or co-writers in the process.
Citation-worthy:
"Meaningful assessment should:
- be situationed in a knowledge-making practice
- draw explicitly on social cognition
- measure metacognition
- address multimodal texts
- be 'for learning', not just 'of learning'
- be ubiquitous" (Cope et. al., 2011, pp. 81-82).
