UPA Home > Assessment

> Technology

Assessing the Impact of Technology-Rich Spaces on Student Learning

Technology is being incorporated into the learning environment at a faster and faster pace. What is difficult to determine is the benefit of technology as it relates to improving student learning. What is improved? Does what and how we teach change? Are our learning outcomes modified? How do these modifications impact how and what students learn? This web site is designed to pull together the resources to help us answer these questions.

This page provides links to a wealth of resources designed to facilitate understanding of the role of assessment in relation to technology and student learning. For a more in-depth understanding of how to use technology to support learning, we direct you to EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), which is a community of higher education institutions and organizations committed to helping institutions advance learning through IT innovation.

The following resources represent a broad spectrum of thinking about assessing the impact of technology on student learning. This web site is an attempt to collate resources we have encountered that are relevant to assessment, specifically addressing student learning and how the use of technology impacts learning. These resources should not be seen as an exhaustive list of all available materials related to technology, assessment and student learning. Most of the annotated descriptions associated with these links have been taken from the individual web sites and should not be seen as promoting one resource over another.

Many of the sites link to *pdf files. You can download a free Adobe Acrobat Reader for these files.

Best Practices
This page will provide an overview of some of the best practices in assessing the impact of technology on student learning.

Annotated bibliography
This will take you to an interactive database that incorporates the most recent literature (post-2000) about assessing the impact of technology on student learning. This annotated bibliography allows you to search for literature by author, research type, technology type, discipline, and assessment methods.

Frequently asked questions
This page provides answers to a number of questions related to assessment in the fields of technology and student learning. The questions are related to NC State University's LITRE initiative and to assessment of technology, in general.

Resources
This page will provide links to a variety of resources connected to assessing the impact of technology on student learning. These include: past/ongoing NCSU initiatives, projects, and grants; past/ongoing projects in other academic institutions; theoretical articles related to technology, pedagogy and/or assessment; training resources; web resources such as web logs and web sites on assessment and evaluation; digital media libraries; and other links of interest, such as journals, conferences, grants, and organizations.