The technology I chose as a means of evaluating my students was Google Classroom. The reasons for choosing it were based on the versatility to provide feedback and the availability to incorporate videos and digital documents that we can share.

After receiving feedback from my instructor and a peer, and taking a deeper look at my CMS, I must emphasize that a disadvantage of the platform is its inability for students with special needs to properly access the assessment. Google Classroom allows me to insert video and audio, but students with motor skills needs will need to be addressed in a different way. I must say that the feedback received from both helped me improve my CMS, looking it with a better understanding of my ADC and the purpose of the assessment.

These last months have been an amazing road to learn how to teach and assess. Feedback, technology and assessment are some of the concepts we have been addressing, performing teaching resources while learning; furthermore, we have been paving the way of assessment for learning. There is no need to explain how amazing technology is! But, what happens when technology and unethical paradigms meet?

Technology should help us address our students, it should help us meet with them, but it can’t do our job. There are ethical considerations we need to revise when teaching using technology. Shea Swauger, a librarian and Senior Instructor at the Community College of Denver, exposes in a blog how higher education are implementing algorithmic test proctoring as a strategy to prevent cheating. What makes this really alarming is the idea of how these proctoring apps uses discriminatory values to assess who is threatening and who is not. Predictive programs, developed by Big Tech companies, use algorithms that provides concrete mathematical values that can affect lives based on bias and insufficient information (O’Neil, 2016). How does math become a reliable source over a teacher’s knowledge? How could a teacher invade a student’s personal space? Some programs like Respondus offer surveillance for students’ assessments. Does this type of programs depict teaching moral integrity? How can an invasion to a student’s personal life improve the learning environment? It is simple… it does not.

Cheating is a real issue, but focusing more on motivation, strategy and feedback seems like a more realistic way to achieve the goal: the capacity of a student to transfer knowledge without cheating. In the end, if an assessment requires students to act on their knowledge, there is simply little probability that the students will be able to execute. As Douglas Harrison, vice president and dean of the University of Maryland Global Campus School Cybersecurity and Information Technology, said: Instructors should give students “scaffolded, supported opportunities at lower-stakes to practice the skills, ability and knowledge to build into the competencies.” they are expected to develop.

So, let’s teach, assess, and redirect students while they are on the road to knowledge!