The main goal of this presentation is to describe how rigorous assessment design frameworks and new computational techniques can be used to design and develop assessments in order to realize the reform envisioned in frameworks for 21st century skills including the Next Generation Science Standards (2013). The presentation will describe Inq-ITS (Inquiry-Intelligent Tutoring) and its accompanying teacher dashboard Inq-Blotter, which are technology-based systems designed expressly to assess and support students’ competencies at science practices and support teachers’ pedagogical practice related to these practices. To do so, we will provide an overview of the design, data-collection, and data-analysis efforts for Inq-ITS.We will also describe how we used key computational techniques from knowledge-engineering, educational data mining, and natural language processing in order to analyze data from students’ log files and open-responses in this environment. These algorithms are used to automatically score students’ inquiry skills and scaffold them via our digital agent Rex on the practices in real time as they engage in inquiry, as well as provide teachers with fine-grained formative assessment data, alerts, and TIPS (Teacher Inquiry Practice Supports)to support real time instruction of the science practices.
Dr. Janice Gobert was trained as a Cognitive Scientist at the University of Toronto (Ph.D.,) and McGill University(M.A.). She is Professor of Educational Psychology and Learning Sciences at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education. Gobert has extensive expertise in the design of educational technologies, and the analyses of quantitative data (logfiles and classical assessment data) and qualitative data (think alouds, students’ explanations & models/drawings). She has successfully executed many STEM projects (~25 M USD to date). Gobert is also the visionary and lead inventor of Inq-ITS and Founding CEO of Apprendis, a start-up company that has commercialized Inq-ITS (inqits.com) and and Inq-Blotter. Gobert also holds patents for eye-tracking technology and was lead inventor on 3 algorithm patents used in Inq-ITS and Inq-Blotter, and she also has 4 additional patents on eye-tracking.
