Design and Discovery in Educational Assessment: Evidence-Centered Design, Psychometrics, and Educational Data Mining

摘要

Evidence-centered design (ECD) is a comprehensive framework for describing theconceptual, computational and inferential elements of educational assessment. Itemphasizes the importance of articulating inferences one wants to make and the evidenceneeded to support those inferences. At first blush, ECD and educational data mining(EDM) might seem in conflict: structuring situations to evoke particular kinds ofevidence, versus discovering meaningful patterns in available data. However, a dialecticbetween the two stances increases understanding and improves practice. We firstintroduce ECD and relate its elements to the broad range of digital inputs relevant tomodern assessment. We then discuss the relation between EDM and psychometricactivities in educational assessment. We illustrate points with examples from the CiscoNetworking Academy, a global program in which information technology is taughtthrough a blended program of face-to-face classroom instruction, an online curriculum,and online assessments.