SBIR Phase I: Using Simulations for Large-Scale Assessment of Higher-Order Thinking Skills

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目将尝试开发一个基于在线仿真的工具集原型，用于自动评估高阶思维技能和技术素养。这些技能被广泛认为是重要的，并被纳入了州和联邦科学标准，但目前很少有有效的方法来评估学生是否学习了这些技能。该项目将使用一个现有的系统，该系统允许对教育模拟进行快速原型设计，以开发测试场景，提供关于五类高阶思维的信息。这些场景将模拟中的学生行为与正确和不正确的推理模式相匹配，并且可以很容易地修改为不同的上下文。标准化考试对于指导我们国家学校的教学内容至关重要。尽管全国各地的教育标准都强调技术素养和高阶思维，但州和国家教育考试仍然主要依赖于不足以衡量高阶技能的简答题和选择题。该系统旨在以合理的价格提供更好的方法来评估学生在这些领域的表现，并且还将开创一种更灵活、可定制的设计测试项目的方式，从而降低与开发和验证新测试项目相关的成本。如果成功，这些基于模拟的测试场景将允许改进对学生推理技能和技术素养的评估，特别是在班级规模增加和远程教学变得更加普遍的情况下。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will attempt to develop a prototype for an online, simulation-based toolset for auto-assessing higher-order thinking skills and technological literacy. These skills are widely acknowledged as important and are included in state and federal science standards, but there are currently few effective means to assess whether students are learning them. The project will use an existing system that allows rapid prototyping of educational simulations to develop test scenarios that provide information on five categories of higher-order thinking. These scenarios will match student actions within a simulation to both correct and incorrect reasoning patterns, and can be easily modified to different contexts. Standardized tests are critically important to directing what is taught in our nation's schools. Although educational standards across the country emphasize technological literacy and higher-order thinking, state and national education tests continue to rely primarily on short-answer and selection type questions that are insufficient for measuring higher-order skills. This system aims to provide a better means with which to assess student performance in these areas at an affordable price, and will also pioneer a more flexible, customizable way of designing test items that will reduce the costs associated with the development and validation of new test items. If successful, these simulation-based testing scenarios will allow for improved evaluation of student reasoning skills and technological literacy, especially as class sizes increase and remote instruction becomes more commonplace.