IERI: A System of Principled Assessment Designs for Inquiry: Implementation Study.

Sri International, Menlo Park CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project, building on a planning grant, provides a practical, theory-based approach to developing high quality assessments of science inquiry. The project will produce: (1) a system for developing reusable assessment-task templates organized around schemas of inquiry; (2) generally stated rubrics for recognizing and evaluating evidence of inquiry skills; (3) an organized set of assessment development resources; (4) an initial collection of schemas, exemplar templates and tasks produced in the contest of the BioKIDS and FOSS projects; and (5) a statistical model that supports rigorous analyses of student learning. Rigorous quantitative and qualitative methods will be used to document the process. A "quality of evidence" study will be conducted to determine if the information yielded by these assessments provides more useful and descriptive information of student learning than traditional assessments.