Digital Exams as Socio-Technical Interaction Systems: An ISO 9241-Based Framework for Validity, Fairness and Governance

This paper develops a normatively explicit framework model for explaining and evaluating performance differences between handwritten and computer-based exams in tertiary education. It rejects the reduction of so-called mode effects to input modality and reconstructs digital exams as socio-technical examination systems whose interaction architecture can materially shape the conditions of valid and fair assessment. The study addresses a central gap in the literature: although performance differences between handwritten and computer-based formats have repeatedly been documented, they remain insufficiently explained in terms of the instructional, interactional, and contextual conditions under which digital examination systems operate. Anchored in DIN EN ISO 9241-11, -110, and -210, the study develops an explanatory and evaluative model and examines it against heterogeneous evidence from CBT-versus-paper comparability research, proctoring and integrity studies, writing-mode mechanisms, and stress- and strain-related findings. Selected results from the author’s own work in digitally mediated tertiary settings are incorporated as contextual bridging arguments, without being reclassified as primary data. Across this reconstruction, performance differences are shown to be insufficiently explainable as modality artifacts alone and are more adequately understood as outcome effects of a socio-technical examination system in which context of use, system quality, error consequences, monitoring regimes, and accessibility conditions interact. In this logic, usability under DIN EN ISO 9241-11 is not an ancillary quality feature but a constitutive validity requirement. DIN EN ISO 9241-110 provides the operational bridge through which interface and process characteristics can be translated into exam-relevant fairness and risk profiles, while DIN EN ISO 9241-210 supplies the human-centered process perspective required for governance, lifecycle evaluation, and risk-adequate design adjustment. The contribution does not present a separate controlled usability experiment or a statistical meta-analysis; its epistemic contribution lies in reconstructing effect pathways, systematizing heterogeneous findings along ISO-based categories, and deriving testable propositions and minimum evaluative criteria. The resulting framework identifies interaction load, error exposure, monitoring regimes, and accessibility conditions as validity-relevant variables and offers a normatively grounded basis for the design, evaluation, and governance of digital exams. It thereby provides a theoretically robust and practically applicable foundation for universities seeking to implement digital examinations without reducing validity, fairness, or equitable participation to secondary considerations.