Research Outline

Frameworks and Assessments in Education

Goals

To identify assessment tests and learning frameworks that can be used to determine if students are learning in the following subject areas: writing and reading comprehension, critical thinking, business communication skills, data analysis, information literacy, and information graphicacy and numeracy. Students in the following categories should be considered: high school, college, graduate, mid-career, short course/online learning, and vocational frameworks.
Theory papers should not be included; the focus should be on scientific measures of success in the student. The criteria for inclusion should be experiments with more than 100 participants (not randomized trials) with a preference for meta-analysis studies and articles published after 2006 in leading journals. For each article identified, an overview of the framework or assessment tool, including a quote from the discussion/conclusion regarding the application and/or limitation of the research, should be provided. A spreadsheet summarizing the paper name, author/s, publication date, and the source should accompany the research. The information will be used to uncover new ways of learning.

Early Findings

  • A spreadsheet that will summarize the information requested has been created.

Assessing Comprehension During Reading with the Reading Strategy Assessment Tool (RSAT)

  • This study involved 159 undergraduates. It assessed the Reading Strategy and Assessment Tool (RSAT), which has been developed to assess comprehension and the information processing activities of paraphrasing, elaboration, and bridging.
  • "The RSAT comprehension score was correlated with performance on the GM and ACT tests as performance to the same extent that these were correlated with each other. Moreover, the RSAT, GM and ACT scores were all comparably correlated with performance on the SA test. When we assessed the unique variance accounted by the RSAT measures and the standardized measures (GM and ACT), we found that the RSAT measures accounted for slightly more unique variance than the GM test and a comparable amount as the ACT. One advantage of RSAT over these standardized tests is that it provides an assessment of some of the processes that support comprehension"

Summary

  • Our initial hour of research has been spent reviewing the information sought, assessing the availability, of the information required, and creating the supporting spreadsheet requested. A partially completed example of the information sought is included.