Page 2065 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 2 August 2016
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One of the key questions that have been discussed by ministers and educators around the country is about the capacity of year 3 students to undertake aspects of the NAPLAN test in an online format. Questions have focused on the capacity of year 3 students to undertake a writing assessment using a keyboard as compared to a pen and paper: are they able to undertake the test in the same time frames and is the quality of what they can produce as high? I can understand these concerns, however there has been a lot of research reviewing the ability of year 3 students to undertake this test.
It is important to remember that the writing test is not about handwriting skills, and nor is the NAPLAN online testing about touch typing skills. Rather, the writing test is an assessment of things such as text structure, ideas, vocabulary, sentence structure and punctuation and spelling. It is expected that there will be variations in how fast and well a student can type, just as there are now variations in how fast and well a student can write by hand. Students will have sufficient time to complete the writing test, regardless of whether they complete it by hand or by keyboard.
While many online assessments both in Australia and overseas have not shown any disadvantage relating to keyboard skills, ACARA, with the support of jurisdictions, is conducting its own research in this area within the specific context to NAPLAN online. The purpose of this research is to provide an evidence base for education ministers, education systems and the broader community about delivering NAPLAN in an online environment.
Moving to NAPLAN online should not be a catalyst to emphasise keyboard skills over handwriting skills in the classroom. It is still important in today’s world that our students learn how to handwrite, but ACARA’s research has shown that teaching to the Australian curriculum adequately prepares a student for participation in NAPLAN online, including the teaching of computer skills which prepare students for the online assessment process.
The move to online or computer-based assessment is a natural outcome of the increasing use of information and communication technologies in classrooms across Australia. Similar to the current paper NAPLAN tests, the best preparation for students to undertake a NAPLAN online assessment is good teaching consistent with the Australian curriculum.
The online national assessment platform is being built by Education Services Australia with state-of-the-art security protections and will be used to trial online assessment in 2016. An important part of getting information back to schools and parents more quickly is the use of automated scoring, which will be used across all of the NAPLAN assessments, including writing.
Research by ACARA to date has shown that automated essay scoring is effective for writing programs such as NAPLAN and that it produces comparable and consistent scores when compared with human markers. ACARA’s ongoing research is ensuring that automated essay scoring will be incorporated fairly for all students. As part of validating its robustness, in 2017, the first year of NAPLAN online, 100 per cent of
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