The pros, cons, and future of education testing software

Innovations in technology have changed the face of modern living. Can educational testing software do the same for learning?

Education testing software is changing the way educators are thinking about tests across the board. However, there are a few points to consider before understanding how education testing software fits into the overall goal of evaluating student performance.

For student testing to be effective at any level, there are a number of things that need to be taken into consideration, including the way students learn and absorb knowledge, student engagement and subject requirements.

Why use educational testing software?

Technology has made it easier for educators to track and collect student data such as attendance, grades, activity, and demographic. This has helped create a clearer picture of each student’s learning behaviors and abilities.

Because of this, educational testing software can greatly improve the testing experience for both those being assessed as well as those doing the assessing.

Education testing software facilitates personalized instruction and feedback with data reports to help pinpoint where individual students are struggling. This valuable information can improve the learning process and is also relatively cost-effective.

What is testing supposed to achieve?

The role of assessment has several core functions. These include:

• Generating marks which distinguish between students or enable pass/fail decisions to be made.
• Providing verifiable evidence so others can judge the appropriateness, standards, and effectiveness of the course.
• Capturing student time and attention.
• Generating appropriate student learning activity.
• Providing timely feedback which students can act on.

Roadblocks to using education testing software

Although education testing software is growing in popularity in education, there are potential drawbacks. The first of these is the availability of computers or tablets in classrooms is still limited to 50% of the student population.

Generalization is also a possible drawback as one misconception is that education testing software only applies to subject areas such as science and math. Courses such as liberal arts encourage multiple perspectives, which automated grading tools may not accurately capture.

Another potential roadblock is feedback on student performance. This feedback is usually based on a summative assessment that the student completed during school intervals. This information provides insight into the effectiveness of course teachers, not the specific current lesson plan.

What are the advantages?

Despite the potential drawbacks that educational testing software may present in application, there are many advantages to be considered as well.

The most obvious benefits of educational testing software are the improvements in assessment efficiency and flexibility. Educational testing software has made testing far more accessible for several reasons.

First, it can lower barriers to entry by making the delivery of testing more flexible, as opposed to the traditional scheduling of times and places. This helps increase the number of access points by overcoming the geographic constraints and other barriers to delivery. Secondly, accessibility-compliant assessment technology can lower the barrier for students with audio, speech, or motor impairments.

In addition, educational testing software and education technology offer an advantage to students by providing more valuable measures since the tasks allow responses that are closer to real-world applications. In some cases, these types of skills assessments may not be possible with traditional tools. This can be seen as a major advantage of testing software as the student’s ability to use technology will be necessary when they enter into today’s workforce.

The future of educational testing software

Edtech and educational testing software will have a big impact on classrooms in the coming years. Adaptive learning is one area that is gaining steam. In the context of testing software, adaptive learning will allow tests to change to best fit a student’s level of knowledge as he/she sits a test. This will allow students to advance their learning more organically as adaptive software gradually increases a test’s difficulty in concert with a learner’s progress.

Along with adaptive learning, educational testing software is likely to see continuous improvements to its accessibility design to accommodate the abilities of as wide an array of learners as possible.