A decision of whether to move from paper-and-pencil to computer-based tests is based largely on a careful weighing of the potential benefits of a change against its costs, disadvantages, and challenges. This paper briefly discusses the trade-offs involved in making such a transition, and then focuses on a relatively unexplored benefit of…

This paper identifies important technological, financial, and equity challenges to the development and implementation of online or onscreen educational testing. The insights are based on the author's experiences in New Zealand of being the senior project manager for the Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning (asTTle) computer-based…