The End of Meaningful Evaluation (Kimia)

8 December 2024

Dear Diary,

Today, the strangest thing happened to me. If I’m being honest, I had a gut feeling something was wrong, it was too quiet at school today, too still, but I chose to ignore it. I thought I must be out of my mind.

I was sitting at my desk after school grading papers when a hooded figure dressed in black appeared right before my eyes. He wasn't scary, but his energy was strong and determined. Yet for some reason, I knew he was on my side. As I reached my arm out to touch him, he disappeared into black dust. I ran out to see if anyone else saw him when at the corner of my eye I noticed something left on my desk. It was an envelope, with the letter E on it…

I’ll read the letter later tonight. I’m trying not to think about it right now…got to go back to work now!

Wish me luck! Gemma

The End of Meaningful Evaluation

Gemma,

The information I bring for you must be dealt with in haste. I have told you about the downfall of in-person learning and the role of educators being reduced, but I did not tell you how. This letter will reveal to you the first way technology has taken over our once beautiful and intricate educational system, through the destruction of educational evaluations.

Evaluations, once a tool to assess student learning, provide feedback for improvement, and guide students to meet their educational goals, are now met with hollow data.

In 2024, evaluation is shaped by the blend of traditional assessment methods and holistic, personalized approaches such as self-assessment, peer feedback, and exams based on the individual learning needs of students. Educators were able to make evaluations an interactive and inclusive process by emphasizing the personal goals of each student, helping them keep track of their own development, and using evaluation as an extension of the learning journey. Students were actively participating in self-reflection and progress awareness. A holistic and personalized assessment system inspired students to apply the skills and knowledge learned in the classroom and independently towards their final evaluations, creating a safe learning environment for all.

Today, in the year 2040, things are not so simple. Evaluation is now an empty and soulless machine, deprived of any humanity or understanding. What was once a dynamic, personalized and holistic process is now an algorithm-driven nightmare. In my world, evaluation is haunted by three complex ideas: algorithmic traps on automated grading, self-assessment as counterproductive tools for autonomous learning, and the death of empathetic human connection in grading.

In 2040, online learning has initiated the rise of digital assessments such as quizzes, multiple-choice tests, and auto-graded assignments. These assessments were designed as efficient automated tools to be used for personalized grading, not for checking sincere understanding. It is clear an alternate agenda is hidden deep within this system, as cheating and algorithms take over. These new systems of evaluation encourage students to memorize, rather than to think critically, reducing their learning and assessments to data points, checkboxes and scores generated by algorithms. Here, grades no longer reflect a student’s true knowledge. With no supervision or accountability, students have become masters at cheating their way through evaluations from the comfort of their own homes. Regardless of effort, because of this new system, grades and evaluations become meaningless, and teachers are unable to distinguish between students who understand the material and students who simply know how to play the system. Today, a perfect score on a test does not mean understanding, rather it means the student has found a way to manipulate the digital system well enough to pass the algorithm's surveillance. With this advanced virtual method of learning and assessing, an algorithm spits out numbers while teachers have been reduced to evaluation organizers and cheating enablers, a shallow erosion of what once was a holistic, personalized, and fair drive for meaningful evaluation. For both students and teachers, nothing is truly earned.

What was once an opportunity for students to engage with teachers to reflect on their own learning and find ways for personal growth has vanished completely from this dystopian world. Today, without human interaction and in-person learning, students must complete self-assessments without any real guidance or true feedback from educators. Because of this, students are not able to effectively assess their learning or personal growth but rather must grade themselves blindly by checking boxes while filled with self-doubt. The advanced systems of 2040 do not prepare students with sustainable assessment skills (David Boud) to develop their ability to assess their learning. David Boud claims that “assessment that meets the needs of the present and prepares students to meet their own future learning needs” (Boud, 2000) is key to fostering lifelong learning, and teachers have a critical role in doing so (Boud, 2000). Effective self-assessment requires supportive feedback from teachers, which students are simply not receiving. Without feedback from an experienced educator, students are being misled by a new system that does not care for their learning. Evaluation at the institutional level has been completely abandoned, replaced by a counterproductive system that places educators far from the core of what education means. Teachers wait behind screens, biting their tongues from giving feedback, monitoring students as they falsely assess themselves.

Today - unlike in your time - teachers are avatars on a digital screen, never truly getting to know their students or building real relationships with them. Personal connection, the cornerstone of impactful education, is now a distant memory, lost among a sea of screens. In the past, teachers would roam around the classroom, whisper words of encouragement to their students, and even pat them on the shoulder. This new technological world has brought with it the death of empathy and compassion in learning and evaluation. Online, a teacher's feedback is often overlooked, comes too late, or is unseen, meanwhile, students feel isolated and alienated in their learning. The teacher’s role in the classroom is reduced to mere administrators of automated feedback and mechanically produced grades that lack personalized student connections or compassion. The meaningful connection once praised in education and evaluation is now forgotten and replaced by machines and empty bots.

In today’s dystopian world, what once was an inclusive and holistic approach to evaluation has become a lifeless system of control. The humanity and creativity that once nourished educational institutions are now replaced by a student's ability to comply with digital instructions and algorithms. Now, evaluations are a representation of artificially produced grades and lack the human compassion needed for fair assessment. 2040 is a year of isolation and disconnection, a future where evaluation is a tool for dishonesty and injustice rather than a means for fostering educational growth. As technology facilitators, teachers have been stripped of their autonomy and forced into rigid and hollow systems devoid of meaning, forced to give students grades that fail to reflect true knowledge.

Gemma, so long as virtual learning continues to dictate education, the end of meaningful evaluation will continue. You must figure out a way to stop this. The future is in your hands…

Over and out.

Messenger #346