Technological Implications for Assessment Ecosystems: Opportunities for Digital Technology to Advance Assessment

Authors: John T. Behrens, and Kristen DiCerbo

Consulting Editors: Eva Baker, James P. Gee, and Constance Yowell

Assessment is concerned with principled inference based on observation/data collection (ECD, Mislevy, Steinberg & Almond).  Tools (broadly conceived) based on digital technologies represent a special class of artifacts in that they are often easily instrumented for both the communication and collection of information. As digital activity becomes increasingly part of the natural activity of life, the door is opened for data-based assessment to become part of the natural activity of life as well.  This leads to the possibility of a fundamental shift from assessment as a process of externally imposed instrumentation to assessment as a process embedded in “natural” digital activity. The authors of this paper are asked to explore the possibilities of data-based assessment and to speculate on a future of assessment where digital activity is a primary assessment input. VIEW DRAFT