Is Gaming the Future of Assessment?

CRESST Senior Researcher Girlie Delacruz recently helped reporters at the annual Education Writers Association meeting understand some of the important aspects of designing games for learning and assessment. 

Among the advantages of games is that they can be a useful data source, said Delacruz. 

Find out more in Dr. Delacruz's presentation: Designing Games for Learning and Assessment: Help Me…Help You!

CRESST Working on New Methods for Essay Scoring

Common Core assessments represent a major need for improved scoring of short essays and constructed response questions, which can be time-consuming and expensive to grade. 

CRESST researchers are using deep natural language processing techniques to automatically score essays as one possible solution with some favorable results.

Learn more in this poster from Deirdre Kerr, Hamid Mousavi  and Markus Iseli presented at the recent American Educational Research Association meeting.  

Newsday Quotes Joan Herman on Computer-Based Testing

With the advent of computerized testing across the United States, some school districts are unhappy about the added costs to upgrade their schools' technology systems. But CRESST Senior Research Scientist Joan Herman, in a recent Newsday article, says that current multiple choice and short answer tests "cannot get at divergent thinking or a student's ability to actually communicate."

She argues that the forthcoming computer-driven Smarter Balanced and PARCC assessments will allow students to "show what they are thinking," and help to measure the rigorous requrements of the Common Core State Standards, now adopted by 45 states. 

Read the complete article, LI School Officials Wary of Computer-Based Testing Plan.    

Formative Assessment Can Improve Learning

In a recent presentation to the American Educational Research Association, CRESST Senior Researcher Yunyun Dai discussed findings from a CRESST study showing that well designed formative assessments can lead to improved student learning in science. 

Dr. Dai's presentation is available as well as a related CRESST report. 

Distinguished Scholar Colloquium Features James Pellegrino

The May 22, 2013 CRESST Distinguished Scholar Colloquium will feature University of Illinois at Chicago's Distinguished Professor James Pellegrino, one of the nation's foremost education researchers.  

A lifetime member of the National Academy of Education and co-chair of the Committee on Developing Assessments of Science Proficiency in K-12, Dr. Pellegrino will present "Proficiency in Science: Assessment Challenges and Opportunities." 

The special presentation will take place in the Reading Room of UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at 12:30 p.m.. To attend please contact Candice Carpio. The presentation is open to all. 

Learning from Video Game Data

Video games are being used at a growing rate to support learning in the classroom. But what can researchers learn from player interaction data?

In a recent four-hour training course sponsored by the National Council on Measurement in Education, CRESST researchers Greg Chung, Rebecca Buschang, Deirdre Kerr, and Danny Parks shared their knowledge of how researchers can use video games to measure student learning. 

Both a PowerPoint and a course syllabus are available. 

June 12 - Gordon Commission Participates in CRESST Colloquium

Renowned researcher and educator Edmund W. Gordon will be among the noted speakers at the next CRESST Distinguished Scholar Colloquium, June 12, 2013, from 1 - 4:30 p.m. at the UCLA De Neve Plaza.

Assessment and education policy experts Louis M. Gomez, Eva L. Baker, Li Cai, and Joan L. Herman will also share their ideas for improving assessment across the United States. 

Co-sponsored by CRESST and the Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment in Education, the colloquium is open to all. To reserve your space, please send a note to carpio@cse.ucla.edu.

Accolades for CRESST Partner Jamal Abedi

The National Association of Test Directors (NATD) recently announced that Professor Jamal Abedi, University of California, Davis, was selected to receive one of only two NATD Outstanding Achievement Awards for 2013. 

Abedi, a longtime CRESST partner and former CRESST senior researcher, will be honored during this year's NATD annual business meeting on April 27th in San Francisco. 

Dr. Abedi is being honored for his outstanding research to improved assessment of English Language Learners. He has been previously honored with the Outstanding Contribution Relating Research to Practice Award by the American Educational Research Association and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Educational Research Association. 

Delacruz Awarded Distinguished Fellowship

CRESST Senior Researcher Girlie Delacruz was recently selected as a MacArthur Foundation/ETS Gordon Fellow in a recent announcement from Arizona State University and the Educational Testing Service. 

Honoring the life and work of distinguished scholar Edmund W. Gordon, the fellowship will allow Dr. Delacruz to collaborate with other young scholars on learning and assessment activities with a focus on innovation, equity, and challenging education problems. 

Dr. Delacruz, a young scholar in the field of technology, sensor-based networks, and games for both learning and assessment, will also be a presenter at this year's annual Education Writers Association meeting at Stanford University on Saturday, May 4th. 

CRESST Research Improves Ontologies

This latest CRESST report describes how a new system called OntoMiner increases the accuracy of ontology generation.

Using concepts and relations, ontologies provide an understandable method for representing information that can be useful in learning research. 

The CRESST researchers, Hamid Mousavi, Deirdre Kerr, and Markus Iseli, found that OntoMiner substantially increases the accuracy of ontology generation. 

Read more in CRESST Report 827, Unsupervised Ontology Generation from Unstructured Text.