Why Shouldn't Teachers Use Technology to Assess Students' Learning

There are two major pros to using technology to assess student learning. First, assessing student learning via computer is faster and more efficient than doing it in other ways. Computers can simply score student work as the students take assessments. This means that teachers do not have to take the time to grade the tests themselves. Second, assessing student learning via computer is more objective than doing it in other ways. If human beings grade student assessments, they are likely to have problems being fair. They might grade a particular test badly based on their mood, or the fact that they are hungry, or the fact that the student has bad handwriting. Computers are not subject to such problems and all assessments will be graded objectively. The main con to doing this is that tests that can be given by computer are inherently limited. These tests have to be multiple choices. Computers cannot, at this point, judge written answers. They cannot judge projects that students submit. They can only grade such things as multiple choice or true/false questions or questions where the answer is a number. This severely limits the sort of subject matter that can be tested and the sorts of skills that can be tested. The only scenario where a teacher should stick to one just one type of teaching is whenever the teacher has just one type of student. Since there is no such thing as one type of student, then there is no reason to stick to just one intervention or strategy to teach. Technology is only one of several teaching processes from which students can learn. Even in the digital age, there are bound to be students that may prefer to learn through manual skills such as arts and crafts, others through poetry or literature, others may even prefer to problem solve mathematically, and there is always the odd percent of students who suffer from "Techno stress" and get frustrated too quick if the technology is too complicated, or not fast enough for their taste.