Future Ready Learning

Increase Accessibility
Advances in technology grounded in UD and systems that align to UDL have made assessments
more accessible and valid for a greater number of students, including those with diverse abilities
and language capabilities. These advances have allowed a greater proportion of the population
access to assessments.
Special features include the ability to increase font sizes and change color contrast, text-tospeech,
bilingual dictionaries, glossaries, and more. These features can be embedded in assessments
and made available to students, depending on what the assessment is measuring and
identified learner needs. Seamless accessibility features embedded in technology-based assessments
reduce the need to single out individual students for extra supports, providing an added
benefit for students and educators alike.
Similarly, assistive technology, such as text-to-speech, alternate response systems, and refreshable
braille, supports students with disabilities in accessing learning. These technologies continue
to advance and can make it possible for students to interact with digital learning resources in
ways that would be impossible with standard print-based assessments. When both assistive technologies
and assessments effectively interoperate, students are better able to demonstrate what
they know and how to apply this knowledge.
Adapt to Learner Ability and Knowledge
Computer adaptive testing has facilitated the ability of assessments to estimate accurately what
students know and can do across the curriculum in a shorter testing session than would otherwise
be necessary. Computer adaptive testing uses algorithms to adjust the difficulty of questions
throughout an assessment on the basis of a student’s responses. For example, if the student
answers a question correctly, a slightly more challenging item is presented next; if the student
answers incorrectly, he or she receives another opportunity to demonstrate knowledge in a
different manner.
Because adaptive tests target content and test items aligned with each student’s ability level,
the adaptation leads to more precise scores for all students across the achievement continuum
in a greatly reduced time period. Achieving the same level of precision in a traditional paperand-pencil
test would require students to answer many more questions, potentially impacting
instructional time. Moving forward, these assessments can benefit from increased interoperability
so that the data from these adaptive measures can be pulled into a centralized dashboard that
allows a more integrated understanding of student performance.
Embedded With the Learning Process
Embedded assessments are woven directly into the fabric of learning activities students undertake.
Such assessments may be technology driven or simply a part of effective instruction, and
they may appear in digital learning tools and games. They are generally invisible to the instructional
process because they are embedded in the regular classroom activities. Embedded assessments
have the potential to be useful for diagnostic and support purposes in that they provide
insights into why students are having difficulties in mastering concepts and provide insights into
how to personalize feedback to address these challenges. 13
Game-based assessment is designed to leverage parallels between video game design and
next-generation learning and assessment. 14,15 Recent research has focused on promising ways that
OFFICE OF Educational Technology
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