May 8, 2008

Plans for (last) class meeting on May 12:

• Presentation Making Sense of Data from Complex Assessments
• Discussion of class projects, if necessary
• Debriefing of the course

I have removed your overheads for individual presentations from the website, so your work is not publically available. If you need access to any of them let me know.

Final paper. The due date is May 21, the last day of finals and the last day of the semester.

Debriefing topics. Our semester is over now. Think of this as suggestions how the class might be modified for the next time it is taught.

• Topics: The psychological perspectives and the assessment design framework are core to the course, but given this, are there suggestions for more emphasis on some topics, less on others, or new ones to add?
  
• Common readings: Too many, too few? Too hard, too easy? Which were most useful? Which were not useful? Any suggestions to add to the list?
  
• Written assignments on selected common readings: Should be more? Is choice of questions to address a good idea? Do you like anonymous responses made available to see what others are thinking?
  
• Individual readings: These are meant to get you to think deeply about a particular reading, and share your insights with the class. Also provides practice in giving presentations (a sociocultural purpose--this is one of the important aspects of the profession). Valuable, useful?
  
• Class time: We did two individual presentations each this semester. If there were only one, more class time could be devoted to discussion of common readings based on seed questions. Which would you prefer?
  
• Projects: Should these be started earlier in the semester, so we can have people talk about their project along the way? Or is it not until later in the semester that you think you are sufficiently familiar with the ideas and machinery to know what you want to do with a project?

May 4, 2008

Overheads for Youngmi's presentation on Bejar

An interesting little article on some recent research on working memory capacity

May 2, 2008

Plans for class meeting on May 5:

• Individual presentation by Youngmi on Bejar (1993).
• Discussion of 'cognitive' vs 'situative/sociocultural' perspectives on learning, based on the readings

Anderson, J.R., Greeno, J.G., Reder, L.M., & Simon, H.A. (2000).  Perspectives on learning, thinking, and activity.  Educational Researcher, 29, 11-13.

Anderson, J.R., Reder, L.M., & Simon, H.A. (1996).  Situated learning and education.  Educational Researcher, 25, 5-11.

Anderson, J.R., Reder, L.M., & Simon, H.A. (1997).  Situative versus cognitive perspectives: Form versus substance.  Educational Researcher, 26, 18-21.

Greeno, J.G. (1997).  On claims that answer the wrong questions.  Educational Researcher, 26, 5-17.

April 28, 2008

Overheads for Mike's presentation on Frederiksen & Collins

April 27, 2008

Overheads for Eunjou's presentation on Delandshere

April 24, 2008

Plans for April 21 class:

• Presentation on the role of context in assessment.
• Individual presentations by Eunjou and Mike.

Other things for your interest:

• A preliminary proposal I submitted to the Spencer Foundation, for research on the kinds of things this class is about (passwork protected).
• Examples of altered photographs.

April 20, 2008

Revision to plans for April 21 class: Presentation on example of the role of knowledge representations in task design. We will have the presentation on the role of context in assessment the following week.

Now up on the website: Overheads for Chien-Yu's presentation on Rupp, A.A., Ferne, T., & Choi, H. (in press) "How assessing reading comprehension with multiple-choice questions shapes the construct: A cognitive processing perspective."

April 19, 2008

Now up on the website: Responses and my comments for Assignment 5.

April 16, 2008

Plans for April 21 class:

• Presentation on the role of context in assessment, an issue that is important from the sociocultural perspective.
• Individual presentations by Ting and Chien-Yu.

April 14, 2008

Assignment 6, on knowledge representations, is now up. It is due April 25.

April 10, 2008

Plans for April 14 class:

• Presentation on cognitive diagnosis.
• Presentation on example of the role of knowledge representations in task design.

Changes in schedules, assignments, etc.:

• Additional required reading added for April 21, Mislevy et al. (2007) on The roles of knowledge representations in assessment.
• Bumped Ting's, Chien-Yu's, and Mike's individual presentations a week further into the future.
• Updated calendar to reflect that we did Theory-Based Task Design last week rather than cognitive diagnosis.
• Modified upcoming assignments on the calendar, to remove the one on sociocultural perspective on assessment and movea week into the future the one on knowledge representations (it isn't up yet).

April 6, 2008

Now up on the website: overheads for Chien-Yu's presentation on task-based language assessment.

April 4, 2008

Due tonight: Assignment 5, comments on VanLehn (1990) .

Plans for the class meeting on Monday, March 27:

• The topic of information-processing cog psych continues. The VanLehn reading provides an excellent overview of key ideas in this perspective.
• Bring a Windows notebook with Minesweeper on it. We will break into groups of 2 or 3 to play some games at the beginner level, and try to express some of what we are doing in terms of goals, affordances, production rules, and strategies.
• An individual presentation by Chien-Yu on Mislevy, Steinberg, & Almond (2002).

March 30, 2008

Now up on the class website: Simon (1975), Youngmi's overheads.

March 28, 2008

Welcome back -- hope you had a good break. Here's the update for our class:

• Assignment 4, comments on Carroll (1976), provided some thoughtful comments. As promised, I have put up some anonymous responses here.
• Remember Assignment 5, comments on VanLehn (1990), is due Friday, April 4.

Plans for class meeting on March 31:

• Presentations on the Embretson (1998) reading, for an assessment built around trait and information-processing perspectives.
• Two individual presentations by Youngmi, both concerning the information-processing perspective.

March 20, 2008

Now on the website: the 'design under constraints' design pattern we build in class together.

March 7, 2008

Two new assignments are up. Note that both assignements provide ten questions, and you are to choose three to answer.

• Assignment 4, comments on Carroll (1976), due Friday, March 14.
• Assignment 5, comments on VanLehn (1990), due Friday, April 4.

Plans for class meeting on March 10:

• Brief presentation on knowledge representations.
• Presentations on the Hively, Patterson, & Page (1968) reading, for an assessment based on a behaviorist perspective, and possibly on the Embretson (1998) reading, for an assessment built around trait and information-processing perspectives.
• We will continue building a design pattern for "design under constraints," based on the Katz reading. If time permits, discussion of a design pattern for "design under constraints," based on the Baxter, Elder, & Glaser(1996) reading

March 3, 2008

Ting's overheads for her presentation on A cognitive task analysis with implications for assessment.

March 2, 2008

Also for our class meeting on March 3: a short presentation on Salthause (1991).

February 28, 2008

Plans for our class meeting on March 3:

• We will continue our work on design patterns, continuing to build a design pattern together based on the Katz reading.
• An individual presentation by Ting, on the Mislevy, R.J., Steinberg, L.S., Breyer, F.J., Almond, R.G., & Johnson, L. (1999) reading, which is about a cognitive task analysis with implications for designing a simulation-based assessment system.
• We will start on a design pattern based on the Baxter, G. P., Elder, A. D., & Glaser, R., (1996) reading, which is also about expertise research, with small group work.

Remember Assignment 3, on expertise, is due Friday, February 29.

February 19, 2008

Now up on the website: Assignment 3, on expertise. It is due Friday, February 29.

Plans for our class meeting on Feb 25 are to talk about expertise, then design patterns, then start building a design pattern together based on the Katz reading. Here is a blank design pattern.

February 18, 2008, update

Now up on the website: Boa & Redish. Mike's overheads.

February 18, 2008

Now up on the website: Excerpt concerning calendar calculation from Rimland, B. (1978), "Inside the mind of the autistic savant," Psychology Today, August 1978, pp. 68-80.

Optional reading for those of you interesting in further reading on connectionist models. Online is short, modesrately technical, overview paper Connectionism: Past, Present, and Future by Jordan B. Pollack, Ohio State University. Readable books on the topics include the following (let me know if you would like to borrow one from me):

• Strauss, C. & Quinn, N. (1997). A cognitive theory of cultural meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [[good nontechnical overview chapter on connectionist models; focus of the book is the interplay between individuals and society in terms of "cultural models."]]
• Gee, J. P. (1992).  The social mind: Language, ideology, and social practice.  New York: Bergin & Garvey.
• Clark, A. (1993). Associative Engines: Connectionism, Concepts, and Representational Change. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
• Hawkins, J, & Blakeslee, S. (2004). On intelligence. New York: Times Books.

February 12, 2008

Links to readings fixed.

Assignment 2 is now up. Note that it is due the Friday of next week, which is Feb 22.

Plans for our class meeting on Feb 18 are to finish discussing Argument Substance and Argument Structure then move to Leverage points. Maybe we'll get to design patterns, but probably not--that's what will be up next.

After the break, we will have our first student presentations of individual readings papers, from Eunjou and Mike.

February 8, 2008

Plans for our class meeting on Feb 11 are to finish discussing the connectist paradigm and a socio-cognitive view on knowledge (the cognition overheads) and begin on evidence-centered assessment design, with the following sequence of overheads: Layers in the assessment enterprise, Argument Substance and Argument Structure, and Leverage points.

January 31, 2008

Plans for our class meeting on Feb 4 are to discuss the connectist paradigm and a socio-cognitive view on knowledge. There are two sets of overheads, on neural networks and cognition from from this point of view.

Requests are starting to come in for individual readings. I have put up the ones I have so far (multiple requests for the same paper were handled in the order I received them), on the individual presentations schedule.

January 14, 2008

Welcome to EDMS 738 for Spring 2008, "Cognitive Psychology and Assessment"! Our class will meet Mondays 4:15-7:00 Eastern, in the Engineering Annex Building 0307. ).

Our first meeting is January 30. The first half of the class will be introductions and an overview of the course. After the break will be an initial presentation on the basic models of the evidence-centered design framework, which we will be using throughout the course to organize our work. Here are the overheads:

Now up on the website: Overheads for our first class meeting:

• Introduction to the course
• Brief overview of cognitive psychology

If you are reading this note before our first class meeting, read these materials before class:

A brief introduction to evidence-centered design, by Mislevy, Almond, & Lukas.

Chapter 1 of Knowing What Students Know, by the National Research Council.

Bob Mislevy