Imagine (a world of assessment without tests)

How do we get beyond the tick-box or bubble filling exercise of exams and tests, whilst also measuring ‘progress’? We delve into ideas around ‘invisible assessment’ and question who benefits from‘traditional’ and re-imagined forms of assessment, including games-based assessment. Can ‘tests’ be fun and should they be? How do we measure collaboration?
Imagine (a world of assessment without tests)
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This article is part of the Forum Network series on Digitalisation

What’s in this episode?

How do we get beyond the tick-box or bubble filling exercise of exams and tests, whilst also measuring ‘progress’? We delve into ideas around ‘invisible assessment’ and question who benefits from‘traditional’ and re-imagined forms of assessment, including games-based assessment. Can ‘tests’ be fun and should they be? How do we measure collaboration?

People

Sophie Bailey is the Founder and Presenter of The Edtech Podcast


Sophie is the founder of the iTunes new and noteworthy, The Edtech Podcast. The mission of The Edtech Podcast is to improve the dialogue between ‘ed’ and ‘tech’ for better innovation, through storytelling. The podcast is downloaded 1500+ times a week, from up to 141 countries with the UK, US & Aus in the top 3. Sophie is a mentor and advisor within the edtech community. If she’s not interviewing a University Lecturer, School Leader, Ex-Angry Bird, NGO, or Investor about education innovation, she’s chasing her three year old around the park or binge-reading Homo Deus.

Twitter: @podcastedtech

Dr. Kristen DiCerbo, Vice-President of Education Research, Pearson

Dr. Kristen DiCerbo is the Vice-President of Education Research at Pearson. She leads a team of researchers focused on conducting and translating research about learners and learning to inform the development curricula and tools developed by Pearson. Her personal research program centers on simulation and game-based assessment. She has published more than 20 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, as well as white papers on transformations of education in the digital world. Prior to joining Pearson, Kristen provided research support to the Networking Academies at Cisco and was a school psychologist in a local school district in Arizona. Kristen received her Master’s Degree and Ph.D. in Educational Psychology at Arizona State University.

Twitter: @kristendicerbo

Dr. Valerie Shute, Mack and Effie Campbell Tyner Endowed Professor of Education in the Educational Psychology and Learning Systems department, Florida State University

 Val Shute is the Mack and Effie Campbell Tyner endowed professor of education at Florida State University. Her general research interests hover around the design, development, and evaluation of advanced systems to support competencies. Towards this end, she’s been involved in (a) exploratory and confirmatory tests of aptitude-treatment interactions using the controlled environments offered by intelligent tutoring systems, (b) student modeling research (currently evangelizing the use of evidence-centered design), and (c) developing automated knowledge elicitation and organization tools. An example of current research involves using immersive games with stealth assessment to support learning—of cognitive and noncognitive knowledge and skills. Another example of current research involves externalizing mental models and assessing understanding of complex phenomena. She and her colleagues are developing a suite of model-based tools that are used to assess understanding and provide the basis for informative and reflective feedback during instruction.

Alina von Davier, Researcher, ACTNext

  • Dr. Alina von Davier is the Vice President of ACTNext, as well as an Adjunct Professor at Fordham University. At ACTNext, Dr. von Davier and her team of experts are responsible for developing prototypes of research-based solutions and creating a research agenda to support the next generation of learning and assessment systems. Dr. von Davier is a pioneer in the development and application of computational psychometrics and conducts research on blending machine learning algorithms with psychometric theory.

Twitter: @AlinaVDav

Prof. Rose Luckin, Professor of Learner Centred Design, IOE – Culture, Communication & Media, UCL Institute of Education

Prof Rose Luckin has been developing and writing about the Learning Sciences, Educational technology and Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIEd) for over 20 years. Her research explores how to increase participation by teachers and learners in the design and use of technologies. In addition to over 50 peer-reviewed articles and two edited volumes, Prof. Luckin is the author of Re-Designing Learning Contexts (Routledge, 2010), and lead author of the influential Decoding Learning report (Nesta, 2012). Rose is a member of the Welsh Assembly’s Successful Digital Futures group and was previously  a member of the board of BECTA (the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) and founder and chair of their Research Advisory Group. Rose is a member of the EPSRC college of reviewers and has advised the research councils of various countries on the design and use of educational technologies. Her research applies participatory methods to the development and evaluation of technology for learning. This work is interdisciplinary and encompasses education, psychology, artificial intelligence and HCI.

Twitter: @Knowldgillusion

Quotes from this episode

“We can think about: How can we create activities that tell us what students know and can do? In a more authentic way or a more fun way.”

Colin is a piece of software that consists of some artificially intelligent programming that is designed to analyze data gathered as students learn in a particular way.”

“The very first step in these efforts is to establish the validity of the in-game measures. Are we in fact measuring the things we want to measure?”

References

Tell us your story

We’d love to hear about innovative technology or approaches you are developing or using in education. Leave your stories in the comments below. Alternately, record a quick free voicemail via speakpipe for inclusion in the next episode. Finally, you can post your thoughts or follow-on links via twitter @podcastedtech @kristendicerbo via The Edtech Podcast Facebook page.

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