Game-based learning (GBL) is increasingly recognized as an effective tool for teaching diverse skills, particularly in science education, due to its interactive, engaging, and motivational qualities, along with timely assessments and intelligent feedback. However, more empirical studies are needed to facilitate its wider application in school…

This study investigates the effects of a scenario-based assessment design on students' writing processes. An experimental data set consisting of four design conditions was used in which the number of scenarios (one or two) and the placement of the essay task with respect to the lead-in tasks (first vs. last) were varied. Students' writing…

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) delineate three interrelated dimensions that describe what students should know and how they should engage in science learning. These present significant challenges for assessment because traditional assessments may not be able to capture the ways in which students engage with content. Science…

The quality of students' writing skills continues to concern educators. Because writing is essential to success in both college and career, poor writing can have lifelong consequences. Writing is now primarily done digitally, but students receive limited explicit instruction in digital writing. This lack of instruction means that students fail to…

In 2017, the mathematics assessments that are part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) program underwent a transformation shifting the administration from paper-and-pencil formats to digitally-based assessments (DBA). This shift introduced new interactive item types that bring rich process data and tremendous opportunities to…

The Big Data for Education Spoke of the NSF Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub and ETS co-sponsored an educational data mining competition in which contestants were asked to predict efficient time use on the NAEP 8th grade mathematics computer-based assessment, based on the log file of a student's actions on a prior portion of the assessment. In…

Automatic machine learning (AutoML) methods automate the time-consuming, feature-engineering process so that researchers produce accurate student models more quickly and easily. In this paper, we compare two AutoML feature engineering methods in the context of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data mining competition. The…

In this paper we explored whether engaging in two inquiry skills associated with data collection, designing controlled experiments and testing stated hypotheses, within microworlds for one physical science domain (density) impacted the acquisition of inquiry skills in another domain (phase change). To do so, we leveraged educational data mining…