FORUM DE L' ENSEIGNANT منتدى الأستاذ

Beyond Technical Neutrality: A Critical Digital Pedagogy Study Of How Online Assessment Tools Shape Efl Achievement, Learner Agency And Equity In Algerian Higher Education

Auteurs : Tahri Abderrahmen . Touati Mourad . Hakmi Abdelkrim El Aich .

Résumé

Digital assessment in EFL is often presented as a more efficient medium for unchanged pedagogical intentions, while deterministic accounts cast technology as the driver of pedagogy. Neither position is adequate. This critical integrative review brings research on digital platforms into dialogue with critical digital pedagogy and scholarship on fairness and justice in language assessment. It examines how online systems make certain performances visible, privilege particular forms of language, and enable or restrict contestation. Peer-reviewed international and Algerian studies were identified through Google Scholar, the Algerian Scientific Journals Platform and publisher records. All cited DOIs and stable URLs were checked, while claims were graded as strong, moderate, tentative or contested according to research design, convergence, and transferability to Algeria. The most dependable conclusion is modest: online formative assessment and automated writing evaluation can accelerate feedback and improve some surface-level features. Evidence concerning argument, discourse and transfer remains less settled and varies with the task, teacher involvement and students’ use of feedback. Agency is discussed more often than observed, as few studies examine learners’ choices, refusals, authorship decisions or appeals. Equity research identifies risks involving access, privacy, construct coverage and differential error, yet Algerian studies rarely connect them to subgroup outcomes. Most local research relies on cross-sectional surveys, emergency-period accounts or single-site studies, which provide useful context but cannot establish national prevalence or causality. The central gap is therefore tool-specific, multi-site and longitudinal evidence linking assessment design to EFL achievement, learner agency, and the distribution of benefits and burdens in Algerian universities. A design combining common performance tasks, blind human rating, platform records, direct measures of learner choice, fairness and accessibility audits, and explanatory interviews is proposed. Online tools are treated neither as inherently harmful nor neutral, but as consequential components whose effects arise from design, institutional purposes and unequal learning conditions.

Mots clés

critical digital pedagogy ; online assessment ; EFL ; learner agency ; assessment justice ; digital equity ; Algeria