Measuring what matters most : choice-based assessments for the digital age / Daniel L. Schwartz and Dylan Arena.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schwartz, Daniel L., author.

Arena, Dylan, author.

Series:

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation reports on digital media and learning

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation reports on digital media and learning

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Educational tests and measurements--Data processing.

Educational tests and measurements.

Decision making--Evaluation.

Decision making.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vi, 181 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2013]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

"If a fundamental goal of education is to prepare students to act independently in the world -- in other words, to make good choices -- an ideal educational assessment would measure how well we are preparing students to do so. Current assessments, however, focus almost exclusively on how much knowledge students have accrued and can retrieve. In Measuring What Matters Most, Daniel Schwartz and Dylan Arena argue that choice should be the interpretive framework within which learning assessments are organized. Digital technologies, they suggest, make this possible; interactive assessments can evaluate students in a context of choosing whether, what, how, and when to learn. Schwartz and Arena view choice not as an instructional ingredient to improve learning but as the outcome of learning. Because assessments shape public perception about what is useful and valued in education, choice-based assessments would provide a powerful lever in this reorientation in how people think about learning. Schwartz and Arena consider both theoretical and practical matters. They provide an anchoring example of a computerized, choice-based assessment, argue that knowledge-based assessments are a mismatch for our educational aims, offer concrete examples of choice-based assessments that reveal what knowledge-based assessments cannot, and analyze the practice of designing assessments. Because high variability leads to innovation, they suggest democratizing assessment design to generate as many instances as possible. Finally, they consider the most difficult aspect of assessment: fairness. Choice-based assessments, they argue, shed helpful light on fairness considerations."--Provided by Publisher.

Contents:

I What Matters

1 Beliefs about Useful Learning 3

2 Enter Technology 11

II Theoretical Matters

3 Choice Is the Central Concern 27

4 The Isolation of Knowledge 35

5 Preparation for Future Learning 49

III Practical Matters

6 Choice-Based Assessments of Learning 67

7 Standards for Twenty-First-Century Learning Choices 81

IV Matters of Practice

8 The Tangle of Reliability and Reification 101

9 New Approaches to Assessment Design 111

10 A Research and Development Proposal 125

V The End Matters

11 Fairness and Choice 149

12 Final Summary 163.

Notes:

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

9780262312882

0262312883

9780262312875

0262312875

OCLC:

949907387

Access Restriction:

Open Access Unrestricted online access