Assessment is vital: it allows educators and institutions to understand where students need support and also gives young people the qualifications they need to progress to their next phase. Assessments also play a key role in creating an equitable education system that gives every student the chance to demonstrate what they’ve learned.
However, challenges such as communication barriers and time constraints mean that students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) can struggle to access assessments, or that their abilities are not being accurately measured.
Digital assessments can provide the solution to this. Modern EdTech platforms now incorporate a range of tools for increased accessibility, and they support innovative methods for assessing student understanding beyond traditional written responses. Detailed data collection also enables you to immediately adjust your teaching strategies in response to diverse learning needs.
Read on to find out how digital assessment levels the playing field for SEND students and gives you new tools to support them.
Key Takeaways
- Traditional assessments can present many obstacles for SEND students, preventing an accurate understanding of their progress.
- Digital assessments can be customized for individual needs, including extra provisions like additional time and accessibility tools.
- Innovative assessment tools like adaptive assessment and technology-enhanced items (TEIs) can unlock new ways to test students’ understanding.
- Data can be quickly and easily gathered to inform changes in the classroom immediately.
Challenges for SEND Students With Traditional Assessments
Traditional assessment methods, such as written essays, tests, or quizzes, can fall short of equitable provision for SEND students.
For example, some students may have problems with handwriting, or find it difficult to read printed sheets unless special versions are created for them. Others may need extra processing time for reading questions and composing answers—for example, those with dyslexia.
Traditional tests may also lack visual cues or present abstract concepts that can be tricky for neurodivergent students. And some students may give up after a few questions if they’re intimidated by the test medium.
Many educators will therefore work with SEND students who excel in classroom settings but perform poorly in traditional tests. Their learning needs are not being matched by a one-size-fits-all assessment style and, as a result, the assessment doesn’t give an accurate picture of these students’ abilities or correctly pinpoint where they need support.
Differentiating assessments according to need is one possible solution, although this can mean a lot of extra work for educators. It can also mark students out as different within the classroom in ways they may not welcome. Dr Katy Finch, lead researcher at the UK assessment body AQA, also notes that the same adjustment may not work for everyone with the same learning disability. So, solutions need to be highly personalized.
Moving to digital assessment can significantly alleviate these issues through more accessible and individualized technology.
5 Ways Digital Assessment Strategies Can Help SEND Students
The benefits of using technology are rapidly becoming clear as more governments and institutions worldwide turn to digital assessment for a host of reasons—including the advantages for SEND students.
1. Improved accessibility
A huge advantage of digital assessment is the ability to use assistive technology to make tests more accessible for students with SEND. This includes tools like keyboard controls, digital highlighters and notepads, text-to-speech capability, and the ability to change font sizes or adjust color contrast. You can also introduce accessibility provisions for any media components of the test—for example, transcripts, captions, or audio descriptions for videos.
These tools are also discreet, so students can use them without feeling that their disability is highlighted to the rest of the cohort. In addition, it’s easy to add extra time for certain students, either on selected questions or on the whole assessment—without the need for a human moderator to keep an eye on the clock.
The National Center and State Collaborative chose TAO’s testing platform to help ensure that students with significant cognitive disabilities could achieve improved academic outcomes and leave high school ready for their next steps. Being able to customize how text appears on tests, for example, or allowing printouts, was a crucial part of developing an assessment strategy that would enable SEND students to succeed.
2. New assessment styles
Digital assessment also opens new possibilities for assessment styles and question types through the use of Technology Enhanced Items (TEIs). These are computer-based interactive question items such as image matching, cloze exercises (filling the gaps in a text), sliders, and choosing parts of pictures or texts to answer the question.
These modes of assessment are proven to be more engaging for learners. However, beyond this, they may unlock new ways for SEND students to demonstrate understanding.
For example, students can click on a map rather than needing to recall place names; they can click and drag an interactive widget that visualizes the volume of liquids instead of writing out the numbers; they can record short audio answers with the microphone. TEIs can therefore allow students with a range of learning needs to show their understanding without having to read, write, or imagine particular concepts on their own.
Platforms like TAO can also work with you to develop your own question types to respond to your students’ specific needs. So, no matter the nature of the student’s SEND, you can design a custom assessment to suit them.
3. Personalized assessments
A transition to a digital platform can also allow for adaptive assessments that meet the diverse needs of SEND students in ways that were not really possible via traditional media.
Adaptive testing technology adjusts the difficulty of test questions based on the student’s performance in previous questions. While this means that students will get different versions of the test, it can help make sure they are engaged throughout the assessment with questions that are personalized at the right level. Students can end the assessment feeling more encouraged than defeated by an impossible test.
Also, while they may have completed the same number of questions as a peer, a student’s final grade will show how much difficulty they could cope with—a supplementary set of extension questions isn’t necessary.
Adaptive testing is therefore a useful way to gather more accurate information about students’ abilities, as their path through the test will be recorded and you can find out which questions challenged students the most. This is particularly useful to highlight the outliers, as opposed to traditional tests which give most information about those in the middle.
4. Collect and analyze data
Digital testing platforms also allow more in-depth data analysis and reporting. Educators can use the information gathered to identify where each student struggled in an assessment. Teaching can then be adapted and more support put in place, particularly for SEND students.
You can also introduce metatags to categorize each question by type, level of difficulty, topic, etc., and then use the metadata gathered to examine patterns—for example, did a certain type of question cause particular difficulties for SEND students? This can lead to useful adjustments to make future tests more accessible.
Data collection can also happen almost instantly, closing the gap between assessment and applying changes in the classroom, so no time is wasted. With TAO, you can plug your data into any analytics platform to visualize your data in ways that make decisions easier.
5. A holistic assessment process
While it’s important to consider the accessibility of the test itself, a digital process can also help you improve the entire assessment cycle for SEND students. Where platforms adhere to stringent accessibility standards, like TAO, each phase of the assessment is considered, from registration and log-in to results collection.
Some students may need more support pre-assessment; this can take the form of sample tests, practice environments, or content clarification. This can be especially important for neurodivergent students who may experience anxiety in unfamiliar situations and require detailed information in advance.
In certain cases, you may need to consider any barriers to using technology, such as internet access and tech know-how; while this can apply to all students, it’s an important duty to make sure SEND students are not unduly impacted.
It’s also important when choosing a platform to consider the parents, carers, educators, and others who might be involved in supporting SEND students. They may have access needs themselves, but beyond this it’s important to make sure they have the right information presented in a clear manner to help them make decisions about the young people in their care.
The Path Forward
Given our duty to ensure the whole learning cycle is accessible to all students, including those with SEND, adapting our assessment methods is crucial. Digital technologies give educators the tools to easily personalize testing, both through relevant provisions and innovative testing styles. They also allow for valuable data collection so the needs of each student can be fully understood.
As such, switching to digital assessment can be a powerful part of enhancing educational equity. With the right platform, you can make sure your SEND students are supported every step of the way.
As your next step, explore more creative ways to assess student learning, and check the 5 major pitfalls to avoid when introducing assessment tech.
FAQs
Is digital assessment suitable for SEND students? Digital assessment is suitable for SEND students when it’s designed with accessibility and personalization in mind. With the right digital assessment platform, you can design and implement accessible tests that give each student the chance to demonstrate their understanding, sometimes with special provision, in more innovative ways than traditional assessment methods.
What are the benefits of digital assessment for SEND students? Digital assessments have many benefits for SEND students. For example, they allow for necessary provisions like extra time and additional tools, and they can be customized to introduce new ways of testing understanding, for example using graphics or audio input. Also, adaptive testing platforms can target each student’s specific level.
