Assessment and CALL

This week, we focused on using CALL for assessment purposes. After taking Dr. Jamieson's course in ESL Assessment, I think many an MA-TESLer falls in love with assessment in some ways. The connection between objectives, daily lesson planning, and designing summative assessments becomes clear and takes on new importance. Personally, I gained a lot of respect for assessments because of the profound impact they have on students' lives. Making good tests is so important for our students. Part of good teaching is choosing/making the right test. I found that assessment reoriented me to teaching. Developing and achieving course objectives was suddenly something measurable, and something that I really needed to spend time thinking about and working hard to teach in my lessons.

Regarding technology, DuBravac's (2013) chapter provided an excellent review of key assessment terms and concepts, as well as a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of CALL in assessment. From our discussion with Geoff, we came up with some key points regarding the big three in assessment: practicality, reliability, and validity. If computers are available, this kind of assessment can be very practical for test administrators, as data is collected immediately. In terms of reliability, CALL tests can more easily provide the exact same experience for test takers than a human proctor. On the other hand, if the test isn't given in a language lab, questions of security and identity pose a serious threat to the reliability of the test. Finally, whether a CALL assessment is valid depends, as always, on the intended and actual use of test results; and also on the the constructs tested. If, for example, only true/false or multiple-choice questions are asked on a writing test, how much of the writing assessment construct is being tested? Does it match with the test-maker's expectations? What are stakeholders expecting to know based on these test results. Recent improvements to the e-rater technology used in the TOEFL test are changing the landscape of writing assessment. Ed White, a renowned scholar in the writing assessment field, suggested that computerized assessment is the 300-pound gorilla in the room for any discussion of writing assessment. While I can't really wrap my head around how this technology might assess my essay, I am trying to heed Dr. White's advice and get hip to the new trends.