Educators need actionable information about student progress during the school year. This paper explores an approach to this problem in the writing domain that combines three measurement approaches intended for use in interim-assessment fashion: scenario-based assessments (SBAs), to simulate authentic classroom tasks, automated writing evaluation…

Scenario-based writing assessment has two salient characteristics by design: a lead-in/essay scaffolding structure and a unified scenario/topic throughout. In this study, we examine whether the scenario-based assessment design would impact students' essay scores compared to its alternative conditions, which intentionally broke the scaffolding…

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 research on using event logs and item response time to study test-taking processes is rapidly growing in the field of educational measurement. In this study, we analyzed the keystroke logs collected from 761 middle school students in the United States as they completed a persuasive writing task. Seven variables were extracted from the…

Writing from source text is critical for developing college-and-career readiness because it is required in advanced academic environments and many vocations. Scenario-based assessment (SBA) represents one approach to measuring this ability. In such assessment, the scenario presents an issue that the student is to read and write about. Before…

This paper presents a theoretical and empirical case for the value of scenario-based assessment (SBA) in the measurement of students' written argumentation skills. First, we frame the problem in terms of creating a reasonably efficient method of evaluating written argumentation skills, including for students at relatively low levels of competency.…

In this paper, we examine the student group discussion processes in a scenario-based assessment of engineering professional skills called Engineering Professional Skills Assessment (EPSA). In the assessment, the students were evaluated through a discussion on a scenario related to an engineering problem with no clear-cut solution. We applied…