Testing

Students use technologies to do research for term papers, class projects, and personal exploration. The Internet has opened up new worlds of information for students about virtually every topic.

Computerized testing is actually much older than many people think. If you can remember using a No.2 pencil to fill in a Scantron during an exam at school, then you have participated in computerized testing. True, you didn't directly interact with a computer, but that Scantron was fed into a kind of computer that marked incorrect answers instead of your teacher.

Nevertheless, we'll stick with the definition of computerized testing as any testing that involves a student directly typing his or her answers into a computer, since this is the predominant conception, and it is unlikely to change any time soon.

Click on the links below to learn more about the place of computerized testing in contemporary education.

1. Why is computerized testing popular?
2. Why are some educators critical of computerized testing?
3. Are there any online resources for test takers?

Why are some educators critical of computerized testing?

Here are just a few reasons some educators object to computerized testing:

• Computerized tests are good at measuring certain skills, but it is well known that they are very poor at measuring other skills. A computerized math test can tell a teacher when a student has given the wrong answer, but it can seldom give that teacher an idea of where a student went wrong in the process of solving a problem. A computerized reading test might do a good job of evaluating a student's reading comprehension level, but it probably won't be able to give much indication of a student's ability to engage in higher level textual analysis and criticism. Moreover, no computerized test exists that can competently evaluate a student's ability to write a coherent narrative or construct a discursive argument.
  
  
• Just as some very bright students are not good test takers, some students are not good computerized test takers. While things are changing for the better, studies suggest that boys are still more comfortable with computer technology than girls; test results might therefore be skewed in boys' favor.
  
  
• Many educators worry about a phenomenon called "teaching to the test." When a teacher becomes more focused on student test results than the learning process and the retention of skills, a teacher is said to be "teaching to the test." For example, a teacher's lesson plans might ignore a certain type of problem because s/he knows it doesn't appear on the test. Or a teacher might rely on repeated drills that can temporarily improve student test performance but don't actually help students understand the subject matter.

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