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The idea of "showing what you know" and earning badges instead of degrees? In this economic downswing, could something like this become the new emergent way of learning and of assessing? Thoughts?

Sounds like the digital badge is more lke a digital portfolio- which I would more likely support. I find it interesting that our education system (which strives and struggles to provide consistent, high quality education from coast to coast) is seen as deficient but this badge proposal will be the answer? It's like the flood of support for home-schooling after a home-schooler wins a national competition but no one knows about the tens of homescholers I had to remediate in rural NH. Standardization is the key for any system to be integrated into another system. The variety of education models we have in our country makes it difficult for employers to integrate employees. If this digital badge concept relies on a variety of models, they will have the same problem.

The prospect of digital badges to show what you know is both exciting with its potential affordances and worrisome with some of its limitations and ambiguity. It'd be great if the ideal came to pass that digital badges would allow valid demonstration of super-specific skills and knowledge over a greater range of fields and topics than what having a B.A. or B.S. currently does. Digital badges could represent the most particular concepts or skills at a granular level even-- those that are essential in the real-world (whether that be desired by employers or otherwise). If the task or test or challenge, or whatever else would be the means of assessment for earning a badge, was carefully designed and evaluated to be a truly valid measure of proficiency, then earning a badge for something would be a clear indication that you know something. But like Allison said, standardization would be key. What would these assessments/ badge challenges be- so that they would be truly valid indicators of proficiency? Who would be the purveyors or authorities to determine the assessments or challenges to accomplish a badge? Given the medium (completing badge assessments on one's own computer or mobile device - from any site they're at potentially) - what's to stop a user from going "open book" or "opening another tab" in order to look up answers to questions or tutorials on how to do a task, in order to complete the assessment? Doing this would allow a user to ace the assessment and earn the badge- but would defeat any value of the badge in truly demonstrating knowledge or skill. By imagining if digital badges did reach mass-acceptance and use in the real world, and we were to ultimately find them all over the internet like we're now finding social media widgets, it made me realize that the "prove proficiency anywhere I am in any way I want" won't work. I changed fields and career paths from what I studied in college, so I definitely appreciate the value in being able to truly show e

"The best professional-development research shows that teachers need sustained contact hours (between 30 and 100) of training before altering their practices. So, she did a back-of-the envelope calculation about how much time it would take to implement 50 hours of formative-assessment training over the course of a school year...... Teachers would need about six hours a month, for eight months, which amounts to one early-close afternoon a month plus two additional hours. (Good luck with that in this economy.)"

Perhaps this is where technology can play an enabling role. Easy to use and real-time tools like Socrative or technology based learning environments with embedded formative assessments (like my formative assessment design proposal for VPA) could help reduce the time / training barriers for teachers to incorporate formative assessment into the teaching practice. At the very least, new curriculum initiatives aligned with common core standards SHOULD BE REQUIRED to incorporate formative-assessments. Unfortunately on PARCC is. "Of the two assessment consortia, the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, is not developing formative-assessment resources as part of its federal grant. The other consortium, known as SMARTER Balanced, is."

This online assessment tool, designed by HGSE grad Zach Stein, may feed into last week's discussion re: assessment...

This online assessment tool, designed by HGSE grad Zach Stein, may feed into last week's discussion re: assessment... Has anyone seen or used this tool?

Consider the possibilities for a performance assessment while playing through this simple "escape the room" game. The validity of the experiment involved in the solution is questionable.

Escape games are very big in the publishing industry right now due mostly to their inquiry based assessment and the low development cost compared to highly immersive first-person games. The biology lab escape is one of the better ones that I've seen out there. Thanks Chris!

I played for about 8 minutes and then grew tired of the game. I am curious how assessors would have graded my performance. I found the easier way to "escape the room" was to close the browser window.

$330 million given to 44 states to design new computer-based assessments that will "measure higher-order skills...including students' ability to read complex texts, synthesize information and do research projects."

Here are some resources for generating assessment rubrics in UDL fashion...

Great overview on current efforts to improve assessment, particularly the idea of "stealth assessment". Strongly emphasizes the role of technology in building assessments that track the entire problem solving process - and how these tools can evaluate both hard and soft skills. Last sentence nails it: "That's the promise of a better test: By drawing a map that more accurately reflects our world, we may discover far more promising paths to get where we want to go." Chris Dede gets a big shout out!

I'd say this is the best piece of writing on education and technology for a general-readership that's been posted thus far. (Thanks for tracking it down, Harvey.) It made me think that someone needs to write the education world's version of "Moneyball"--who will be our Billy Beane?

Members of Educational Testing Service's (ETS) Research & Development (R&D) division led the assessment research behind GlassLab's new educational game SimCity™EDU: Pollution Challenge! This new game brings elements of computer gaming to the world of education - providing assessment and learning in an environment that is engaging and exciting. ETS researchers are collaborating with GlassLab on several more educational games.

I was exploring Navigator, searching for formative assessment links.  I came across an HP Catalyst funded iniative at the Colorado School of Mines.    I'm not convinced that Navigator's map view of tech projects is the best organizational metaphor.

Very interesting article. "iREAD (Impact on Reading of E-Readers And Digital content) Ghana Pilot Study" Another example showing us the traditional standardized test doesnt seem to be a suitable type of assessment here. But in addition to that there are many interesting findings related to IT literacy, benefits of the teachers and increased access to learning materials. (never really thought a simple hardware such as e-reader itself will be this 'transformational' to certain countries across the world) 

Arizona State University is using data mining to collect information on their students and help guide them to the "most appropriate major". also, in class, using data collection methods, teachers collect information to be used in assessment Ex: "Ms. Galayda can monitor their progress. In her cubicle on a recent Monday, she sees the intimacies of students' study routines - or lack of them - from the last activity they worked on to how many tries they made at each end-of-lesson quiz. For one crammer, the system registers 57 attempts on multiple quizzes in seven days. Pulling back to the big picture, a chart shows 15 students falling behind (in red) and 17 on schedule (in green)."

wow this is kind of bothersome on some levels and kinda amazing on other levels. While I can see the benefit of understanding where and how a student is more likely to succeed, I think there are some potential dangers with such a system. There is the what I would imagine the psychological effect of such a program and I am thinking particularly about STEM fields where women are already way under-represented and often self conscious about their performance, do you really also need a system telling you you shouldn't be majoring in that as well cause you're not performing at that point....or what about a student who really wants to be an engineer but maybe hasn't been fully prepared with the appropriate math courses in high school, would he or she be filtered into another major? I understand using such a system as a means to target help for example if a student could get an assessment of where they currently are, where they want to go and how to get there....

Interesting Forbes article about Sal Khan's journey. Mentions his recently published book "The One World Schoolhouse".  Highlights of his views reported in the article: "Khan would like to re-create the once common mixed-age classrooms that he believes encourage older kids to take responsibility for younger ones. He wants multiteacher classrooms to provide students with different perspectives. He would abolish summer vacation.... And he would eliminate letter grades altogether, preferring a more qualitative approach to assessment..."

Thanks for sharing Malik. Sal has done some nice work, and I'm wondering whether his mode of instruction can be used in other subject areas especially the arts and music. I'm guessing that it can, but his assessment mode would need to change from MCQs to something more qualitative.

I see similarity in what CEEO is trying to achieve with MIT's Scratch project. Emphasis on creativity, learning from others, reflecting on process. Figuring how to assess its performance remain as an issue here as well. 

For those interested in what individual states are doing, a database was just released that shows info on all fifty states for the following: broadband Internet access online assessment digital content

Following on the mention of the new Common Core assessments - PARCC and Smarter/Balanced - here's an article for educators about the current state of development.

Using Technology to Improve Assessment

The author's top 5 keys to successful education technology... do you agree? Is it missing anything?

One of the more powerful messages I have learned in Stone's class is when you are designing an educational intervention you have to know WHEN to ask the question: what technology, if any, will improve our educational problem? Before you ask this question, the problem should be clearly identified, and the steps to assess if the problem is improving should be laid out. When you have this information, you can then tailor the technology to specifically meet the needs of your current problem. In this way, technology is sort of the means (not the ends!) towards improving education. So, in addition to the author's 5 key factors for educational technology, I would like to add: Is the technology a good fit for addressing our clearly defined educational problem?