Assessment

Whether it is for a learner, an instructor, a designer of a learning setting, or any other stakeholder developing or using a learning opportunity, assessments are critical components of learning environments. Assessments provide a critical difference between knowing if, how, and what learning may occur. Learning Scientists acknowledge the role of assessment as an important component of a learning process, producing feedback to guide learning. However, as important as assessment can be, it is also as complicated as any other learning factor. First, assessment includes a range of topics that are also complicated to understand and implement, such as measurement, evaluation, testing, feedback, credentials, and efficacy. Second, assessments are created and considered around validity, reliability, consequences, and settings; meaning whether the assessment is validly constructed to assess what it is designed to do and whether it can reliably do so when used. Third, there are the intended and unintended outcomes of assessments; a particularly important factor in a world where standardized testing, which can be beneficial, may also be used as a political tool.

An understanding of assessment can begin with a definition from the Gordon Commission Report: Assessment is a process of knowledge production directed at the generation of inferences concerning developed competencies, the processes by which such competencies are developed, and the potential for their development. (Gordon & Rajagopalan, 2016) There is also a differentiation between assessment of learning (i.e., summative assessment), which represents the concept of verifying learning (e.g., testing, evaluation), and assessment for learning (i.e., formative assessment), which represent the concept of feedback that supports a learning process (e.g., teacher comments or self-reflection during learning, coaching,). Common features to many assessments are (i) rubrics, schemas and analytical frameworks that support an assessment process (e.g., grading keys, examples of evidence of learning), (ii) credentials that represent validated learning (e.g., diplomas, certificates, badges), and (iii) widely-used evaluation measurement tools (e.g., multiple choice questions, drawings, graphical representations, writing prompts, simulations). Such features are typical of assessments that are given by an instructor, a peer, an expert, self-assessment, or programmatically from a system (i.e., computer-based).

Learning Sciences research informs many aspects of assessment. There is also a great deal of research on assessment from Learning Sciences adjacent fields, such as psychometrics and both educational and cognitive psychology. But the ubiquity of assessment in our everyday lives results in an overall need for additional research on assessment, whether it is about specific learning opportunities (either in formal or informal settings) or how assessment addresses an entire community or populations (e.g., the impact of a standardized test on college admissions, how value-added model of teacher evaluation impact public school funding). In particular, the advent of educational technology has resulted in emerging research on assessment practices in online learning settings (small and massive), digital games (educational, simulations, and virtual reality), and assessment adjacent technology (online ratings, micro-credentials). There is also a growing amount of critical research and tools that studies how technology-supported methods found in educational data mining, machine learning, and neuroscience (e.g., EEG, MRI, Eye-tracking) can inform our understanding of how individuals react and benefit from different assessments.