SBIR Phase I: Authoring tools for rapid high quality complex assessments for Next Generation Science Standards

SBIR第一阶段项目将研究新工具的可行性，用于编写、分发和评分高质量的基于游戏的下一代科学标准的复杂性能评估，最终目标是美国近5400万学生的整个K-12科学部分。美国科学教育在全球竞争力方面面临着严峻的挑战。为了应对这些挑战，下一代科学标准呼吁对评估进行重大变革。从历史上看，评估的开发周期，特别是衡量复杂学习的周期，需要大量的时间和资源。此外，内容和认知的复杂度量的设计、开发和验证可能是昂贵的，并且需要数月。同样，模拟和游戏的创建也非常昂贵。能够编写大量高质量基于游戏的评估的软件系统将加速评估的开发和创新，降低成本，提高教师的熟练程度和购买力，并通过提供对学生学习进度的宝贵反馈来积极影响教学和课程。高度参与性的评估可能会帮助学生认识到他们需要在没有典型测试压力的情况下集中精力，从而提高学习和自我效能，并显着增加决定攻读科学和工程学位和职业的学生数量。SBIR提案旨在同时满足几个重要的评估要求，包括质量，开发成本，学生参与度，通过创建一个新颖的基于游戏的评估创作系统，使创作变得容易，教师也能接受。所提出的方法将研究两种选择之间的中间路径。传统的评估方法是由专业人员制定评估项目。虽然由此产生的项目是高质量的，但它们也很昂贵，缺乏教师的购买和学生的参与。相比之下，另一种方法要求教师在没有太多专家指导的情况下开发和测试新项目。这些物品虽然真实且价格低廉，但可能存在质量问题。拟议的研究将调查创作工具，为教师提供自由，行使他们的创造力，在创作真实的评估，同时也提供专家指导，显着增加的概率，评估是高质量的，并产生值得信赖的形成性反馈。拟议的系统还将使用心理测量学和教育数据挖掘技术自动测量和评分学生的表现，以快速产生可操作的见解，以指导下一步的最佳教学步骤。将通过可用性、课堂和众包研究来验证拟议的编写工具和由此产生的评估。

This SBIR Phase 1 project will research the feasibility of novel tools for authoring; distributing and scoring high quality game based complex performance assessments for Next Generation Science Standards, ultimately targeting the entire K-12 science segment of nearly 54 million students in the US. US science education is facing critical challenges in terms of global competitiveness. Designed to meet these challenges, Next Generation Science Standards call for major changes in assessments. Historically, the development life cycle of assessments, particularly for measuring complex learning, has required significant amount of time and resources. In addition, the design, development, and validation of complex measures of content and cognition can be expensive and take many months. Similarly, creation of simulations and games is also very expensive. Software systems that enable the authoring of large numbers of high quality game based assessments will accelerate assessment development and innovation, reduce costs, enhance teacher proficiency and buy-in, and also positively impact instruction and curriculum by providing valuable feedback on student learning progression. Highly engaging assessments will potentially help students realize where they need to focus their efforts without the pressure of typical tests, thereby increasing learning and self-efficacy outcomes and significantly increasing the number of students who decide to pursue science and engineering degrees and careers.This SBIR proposal seeks to simultaneously satisfy several important assessment requirements including quality, development cost, student engagement, easy authoring and teacher buy-in by creating a novel game based assessment authoring system. The proposed approach will investigate a middle path between two alternatives. The traditional approach involves assessment item development by professionals. While the resulting items are of high quality, they are also expensive and lack teacher buy-in and student engagement. In contrast, another approach calls for teachers to develop and test new items without much expert guidance. These items, while authentic and low-cost, can have quality problems. The proposed research will investigate authoring tools that offer teachers the freedom to exercise their creativity in authoring authentic assessments, while also providing expert guidance to significantly increase the probability that the assessments are of high quality and generate trustworthy formative feedback. The proposed system will also automatically measure and score students' performances using techniques from psychometrics and educational data mining to rapidly produce actionable insights to guide the next best instructional steps. The proposed authoring tools and resulting assessments will be validated with usability, classroom and crowdsourcing studies.