As information and communication technology (ICT) use has increased in education, there has been some discussion in recent years concerning the use of ICT during school exams. One of the main concerns regarding the use of ICT in education in general is the perceived potential for cheating. This certainly is a real concern, especially regarding exams which are intended to give a reliable measure of what students have learned. In some countries, however, steps are being taken to increase the use of ICT in general and in exams. See information here from the Danish Ministry of Education, on experiences in Denmark of increasing ICT use in the classroom, on assignments, and even on exams.
There’s plenty of research that highlights students’ indiscriminate use of available information resources which sometimes borders on, or are blatant examples of, plagiarism. Yet, there are many reasons for increasing the use of ICT which arguably outweigh the potential for misuse, especially to link students’ everyday use of technology to their school use to promote the use of ICT as a learning tool in all facets of life. The struggle to accommodate technology in education has resulted in a range of approaches, some of which are highly questionable given the aims, ex. blocking access to the Internet or specific web-based services that students commonly use outside of school. Lassen suggests a highly effective alternative approach that has been used to allow ICT use on exams in Denmark – almost deceptively simple but sensible when you think about it – just change the questions from “when and who” to “how and why”. This is an example of changing the practice to accommodate the technology rather than the more common approach of trying to change the technology to fit the practice.
