Supported by U.S. Dept. of Education
Period:
A key recent educational priority has been to use summative assessment as an incentive to, and for measurement of, learner progress and school improvement. It is widely agreed, however, that this should to be supplemented by formative assessment, or assessment for screening, monitoring and diagnosis. This project aims to tackle the challenge of effective formative assessment in the area of writing. Project goals are to: 1) develop the Assess-As-You-Go Writing Assistant using an interdisciplinary team of computer scientists, measurement specialists, content area experts, and educational practitioners and 2) refine a prototype through field tests. This project will test tool feasibility in two Grade 8 curricular areas: informative and persuasive writing in English/language arts and science. Learning writing is both an end in itself, and a medium for learning and assessment across other subject areas. English/language arts is where forms of writing are explicitly taught, and science is a subject where writing is important—for instance, as a medium for representing complex subject matter, to provide interpretative syntheses of bodies of knowledge, or to report on complex performances (experimentation or field studies). Project outcomes will be improved learner performance in writing; more accurate assessment of writing and subject areas using writing in assessment—assessment which plays a formative role for teachers and learners during the learning process; and a cumulative reading of performance of individuals and cohorts providing valid and reliable summative assessment data. This work is performed in collaboration with the UIUC College of Education.